
Class 
Book. 



6M1TKS0NIAW DEPOSIT 






\ 



DEDICATED TO THE SOULS OF MEN 



SOULS 



MARY ALLING ABER 



0CT1» J8I3 






)t^ 



&y 



1893 



3 p 



DONNELLEY & SONS CO., CHICAGO. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

INTRODUCTION. 
Chapter. Page. 

I. How Souls are Educated, ... g 

II. Where Souls Come From ; and What Deter- 
mines the Frequency of Incarnations, - 26 

III. Where Souls are between Incarnations ; and 

what becomes of souls who refuse to 

Develop and Purify Themselves, - 44 

IV. The Relations of Souls to their Bodies, 64 
V. The Virtues of Souls, - - - 82 

VI. Souls beyond our Planet, - - 106 

VII. Soul Consciousness and Freedom, - - 133 

APPENDICES. 
To Chapter. 

I. Jesus of Nazareth ; and the New Testament, 150 

II. Other Universes besides Our Own, - 158 

III. Souls of Animals and of Savage Men, - 160 

V. Sex on This Planet, - - - 163 

VI. Earth under Trial, - - - 164 

VII. Foods, - - - - - 171 



INTRODUCTION. 

Every living thing has a soul : and each thing 
which develops normally, according to the laws 
which govern its type, has the power of separating 
soul from body at will ; but men on this planet 
have so far lost this power that rarely can it be 
exercised when the body is awake and the mind 
conscious. 

This book is a result of the recovery of that lost 
power; and it is a record of facts. The author 
knows that a conscientious student uses the word 
fact with care, and that all human effort is subject 
to limitation and error; and in these respects, she 
claims no exemption from the common lot. 



CHAPTER I. 

HOW SOULS ARE EDUCATED. 

A human being, in passing from cradle to 
grave, doffs its old clothes and puts on new 
ones many times; so the soul of man with- 
draws from one body and enters another. 

If the suits of clothing, from the garments 
put upon the new-born babe to the last worn 
by the old man at death, could be photo- 
graphed, the photographs would give a fair 
notion of the physical changes and outward 
circumstances of the man. If in addition to 
the suit of clothing, each act performed, each 
word uttered, and the thoughts and feelings 
which moved the mind of the man when wear- 
ing the suit could be photographed and phono- 
graphed along with it, and this be done for 
each suit, the series of pictures would give the 
hidden motives of the man, relations to his 
fellow men, and his dealings with them. 

In the non-physical earth, is preserved such 
a record of the lives of the souls who have 
inhabited this planet; and this record shows 
how souls are educated on this planet. 



10 SOULS. 

Imagine a small globule poised over a 
mass of mineral matter. The globule is a 
luminous, mobile substance, but is not physi- 
cal matter. The globule descends into the 
mineral matter, moves about until it finds con- 
ditions suitable to its activity, and then builds 
about itself a body, that is, a crystal. When 
that body is destroyed, the globule seeks new 
conditions, and builds itself a new crystal 
body. This process goes on until the exper- 
iences of the crystal state are exhausted. 

The globule then incarnates in a plant form. 
It passes rapidly from one form to another, 
higher and higher at each step, until it can 
get no more growth in the plant world. The 
globule throughout its career is a soul; and in 
the mineral and plant experiences, is gained 
the beginnings of every human attribute. The 
third phase is the human, that of pre-historic 
man. 

The careers of two souls through the human 
phase will now be given. 

A man has a house and a wife. He takes 
his wife with him into the forest to gather 
wood. She helps him. Unable to move the 
end of a heavy log as he bids her, he strides 
toward her and deals her a blow. She falls 
senseless. He turns the body over; the eyes 



EDUCATION. II 

open once, the body gives a convulsive shudder, 
and the soul inhabiting it is gone. 

Passing the second incarnation, in the third 
these two are together again, and holding the 
same relation. The woman sits by the fire 
nursing a baby, a boy a few months old; and 
standing beside her is a girl of about two 
years. The father enters; his supper is not 
ready; this angers him; the mother calls atten- 
tion to the nursing of the baby. At this, the 
father seizes the infant by its legs and with 
one sweep of his arms flings its head against 
the wall of the house. The shock breaks the 
bones; and the brains fall upon the floor. 
Later, the winter comes on; there is scarcity 
of food; they must migrate. The girl is a 
-L hindrance, — one more mouth to feed, a burden 
to carry in addition to the necessities for the 
journey. The father persuades; the mother is 
reluctant but yields. The two start on their 
journey, leaving the child in the house with 
the door open. She toddles out and moves 
about in the cold, crying for her mother until 
devoured by wild beasts. 

These scenes are from the first and third 
of more than eight hundred incarnations in 
which this soul occupied the body of a civ- 
ilized man or of a barbarian in contact with 



12 SOULS. 

civilization. These incarnations represent 
many, races and occupations, and all social 
ranks. 

In the fourth century B. C. this soul is a 
Greek, Alexander the Great; and in the first a 
Jew, an adept and hermit [see Appendix I]. 
In the second century A. D. he is a Roman 
and a priest of Apollo, who is converted to 
the Christian faith, and martyred in the first 
persecution under Marcus Aurelius: in the 
fifth he is Alaric, in the eighth Charlemagne, 
in the twelfth Abelard, in the fourteenth the 
Black Prince, and in the sixteenth Henry the 
VIII. 

Between Alexander the Great and Henry 
the VIII, there are twenty-two incarnations; 
and in each of them this soul was a warrior, 
priest, or king. In these twenty-four incarna- 
tions, this soul experienced, many times over, 
all that the world afforded of physical devel- 
opment and action, of material pomp and 
glory, of learning and intellectual delights, of 
arduous labors and responsibilities. 

Up to a certain point, souls develop as wild 
vegetation does, by the action of laws external 
and internal, and their own inherent instincts. 
Then, as a gardener takes a wild-crab tree 
prunes, cultivates, trains, nourishes, plants its 



EDUCATION. 13 

seed in different soils until he has a fine fruit 
good for human use; so the gods (see Chap- 
ter VI) take a soul, train and prune it, until it 
is fit to nourish by example and precept the 
souls of other men, and to pass beyond earth. 

The soul of Alexander the Great, on leaving 
the body of Henry the VIII, passed under the 
immediate care of the gods; and the fourth 
phase of its existence began, — the phase of 
purification; for as a fruit may rot because of 
too much sunshine, so may a soul, and all rot 
must be purged away. 

In the family of a poor fisherman on the 
west coast of England, this soul grows up as 
boys commonly do in such places. He shares 
his father's occupations. Restless in so nar- 
row a field, he gets possession of a boat and 
starts northward on a voyage of discovery. 
His boat is crushed between ice floes, his crew 
and supplies lost. Another adventurer takes 
him from the ice floe and carries him down 
through the North Sea to London. After a 
time, he owns another boat, and this time he 
sails southward. His boat is wrecked on an 
island in mid ocean ; and again he escapes 
death through being picked up by a wandering 
skipper and returned to London. Trouble 
follows him. No sooner is his hand on one 



14 SOULS. 

thing, and some of the possessions which he 
covets within sight of his hopes, than the thing 
in his hand and the hope in his heart are 
dashed to pieces. 

Disgusted with the fortunes of a sailor, he 
joins an army. In the first skirmish, he is 
wounded, captured, and thrown into prison. 
In a dark, foul cell nine years pass. The bit- 
terness abates; the soul ceases to chafe. Death 
approaches; he longs to look once more at 
the sun. The iron door of his cell opens; his 
keepers tell him to go; he can not lift his 
head. The men are moved ; they take him up, 
carry him out, and lay him down on the green 
sward outside the prison -gate. The soldier 
draws a few breaths of clean air, looks at the 
sky and sun, and dies ; and the soul escaping 
from that body has lost its craving for phys- 
ical luxury and its dependence on physical 
comfort for contentment. 

Soon after, this soul finds shelter in Africa. 
His father rules a small but happy kingdom. 
The boy grows rapidly in the equatorial heat. 
One day, a gang of slave -hunters put heavy 
chains on his free limbs. He is taken to the 
coast, put into the hold of a small vessel, 
brought to America, and sold to a Virginia 
planter. His training begins; the process is 



EDUCATION. 15 

difficult; no punishments can force this "sullen 
nigger." He is too valuable to be maimed or 
starved for long ; but so intractable that he is 
sold from master to master, bringing a high 
price because of his build and health. On a 
plantation farther south, his overseer has more 
fiendish devices for torturing him than any 
before encountered ; but still he will not do what 
is required of him. A wandering preacher 
comes along and tells the story of the crucified 
with a rough eloquence that touches him. 
He believes the preacher ; and bows his proud, 
sore, angry mind in meekness to his lot. More 
than thirty years has he been a slave ; but now, 
for the first time, he works willingly and serves 
humbly. His fellow -slaves, the overseer, and 
his master are surprised at the gentle faithful- 
ness with which he bears his daily burdens for 
a few months. 

One morning in early spring, as the sun 
rose, this negro came out of his cabin, sat 
down upon the ground behind it, leaned his 
back up against it, picked a little wild blossom 
growing close to the cabin -wall, smiled, and 
stuck the flower in his coarse shirt. Then, 
drawing up his long legs, he clasped his arms 
around his knees, bent his head upon his chest, 
and fell asleep. Gently, the soul within was 



1 6 SOULS. 

disengaged from the sleeper ; and, leaving this 
life of slavery, this soul left its pride, arro- 
gance, scorn, and sensuality. 

The next incarnation was in the family of a 
farmer in the southern part of New York State. 
He became a carpenter, lived a chaste bache- 
lor forty years, and died. This incarnation 
was a rest to the soul. 

Later this soul is a boy in Boston. His 
father is a merchant, trading with the West 
Indies, amassing property. The boy graduates 
at Harvard, travels a little, and then comes home. 
His father is counting on adding his son's ener- 
gies to his own, and offers him a generous 
share in the business. His sister counts on 
him, too. She is two years younger, and 
dreams of social triumphs. To the anger of 
the father and the chagrin and many tears of 
the sister, he refuses to share their plans. He 
owns a little property, received from a relative 
a few years before ; and the income from this 
is enough for him. His sister calls it a pittance; 
and his father is ashamed that any child of his 
is so devoid of decent ambitions as to be con- 
tent with it. The details of business, dinners, 
parties, — these bore him. To yield to the 
wishes of father and sister will but add to their 
pride and greed of money and social position; 



EDUCATION. 17 

and chain him in perpetual boredom. These, 
he thinks he sees plainly, and he sees nothing 
more ; so he leaves home. 

An unpretentious person, whom few notice, 
he travels from land to land, seeking what he 
calls truth — in reality following the craving of 
his soul to know the meaning of life. When 
nearly fifty, he meets, in Persia, a man of twice 
his years, who comes nearer to giving what he 
seeks than any schools or men found elsewhere ; 
but it does not satisfy. He returns to America. 
While he has been gone, his country has been 
through the Revolution, his father and sister 
have died. He builds a small hermitage on 
the southern edge of the Adirondack forests, 
spends a few years in study and meditation, 
and dies. 

Homeless, enduring exposure and fatigue, 
he had sought in many lands what was at his 
own father's door ; and the stirring times of 
the Revolutionary War. had been the opportun- 
ity to find all of truth he was capable of receiv- 
ing. 

At the opening of this century, an Indian 
lad plays on the slopes of the Rockies, and 
listens to the tales of his race. It is the soul 
of Alexander the Great who listens. When 
this lad has reached twenty, his tribe, in its 



1 8 SOULS. 

wanderings, comes in contact with the remnant 
of another tribe. In this, is a girl about six- 
teen whom he loves the moment he sees her. 
Another eye has seen, too; and, seeing, deter- 
mined to possess, — the eye of his chief. The 
chief spends no time in wooing, but demands 
the girl of her mother, the father being dead. 
The girl is much beloved by her people ; and 
when she shrinks from the suit of the chief, no 
one is disposed to force her. The chief, with 
presents and many fair speeches, is dismissed. 
On the following night, with a company of his 
braves, the chief steals upon the smaller en- 
campment and carries off the girl. 

The girl has a cousin, a boy of fourteen, who 
cannot brook this treachery ; our Indian, too, 
thinks it intolerable. These two meet and 
arrange a plan to release the girl. So well does 
the plan succeed that, before the chief has had 
opportunity to enjoy his prize, she is freed 
and hid in a rocky cave known to her people 
only. In returning for some supplies for the 
girl, the older of these youths is captured. 

So enamored of the girl is the chief, that he 
sets aside Indian usages, and offers life and 
freedom to this one who has so openly dared 
to defy him, if he will but disclose the girl's 
hiding-place. Well does this young Indian 



EDUCATION. 19 

know the results of refusal ; for, as a lad, he 
had seen white men put to death by these same 
braves. But he refuses. He is bound to a 
stake ; a fire is kindled in front of it; gashes 
are made in his flesh and filled with hot coals; 
sharpened sticks are burned to redness and 
thrust into his eyes ; and, when cruelty can 
devise no more, the burning fagots are piled 
about his feet, and the soul escapes. 

What is the meaning of this ? Go back to 
the first human incarnation. The debt to that 
woman's soul is paid; for the Indian girl is her 
incarnation, and that of Katharine of Aragon 
also. 

After a few years^this soul incarnates in one 
of the eastern states, and is still undergoing 
purification. In its present incarnation, it has 
paid the debts it owed for the crimes of its 
third. One more necessary human experience 
awaits this soul, — womanhood. 

In a stony field, a man turns the soil with a 
rude plow. The plow is drawn by a woman 
whose soul's career the reader is now asked to 
follow. She is heavy and stolid; and unwil- 
lingly draws the plow under the lash of the 
man who is the father of her child, which lies 
at the edge of the field. 

In the second incarnation, these two are 



20 SOULS. 

together again; and they have a large family. 
The mother and children are indoors; the 
father enters, cuffs the children about, and 
begins his meal. A man enters; this man and 
the father quarrel and come to blows; the 
mother starts to part them just as a blow from 
the man kills the father. The mother goes off 
with the man, leaving the children to shift for 
themselves; two only get care from others and 
grow up. 

In the third incarnation, from a respectable 
home, she drifts into becoming a woman of 
infamous life and occupations. 

In the fourth incarnation, her father is a 
gardener who supplies flowers to noble houses. 
Her mother dies; she remains single, keeps 
house for her father, and helps him in his 
labors, devotedly attached to both father and 
flowers. At the death of her father, she enters 
a convent, and dies beloved by all. 

In the fifth, she is among the Waldenses. 
Barely eighteen, naked, feet chained to the 
floor and hands to the wall, she stands in a 
dark, stone cell. After several days without 
food, drink, or the possibility of lying down, 
she is taken out and burned at the stake. 

A few months afterward, she enters upon her 
sixth incarnation. Born in a noble house, at 



EDUCATION. 21 

thirteen she becomes the wife of a feudal 
baron. Beautiful, rich, petted, she passes a 
few bright years ; and is killed in trying to 
part her lord from another who has insulted 
him at his own board. 

Immediately reborn, she is Elizabeth of 
Hungary, whom Gregory XII. canonized as a 
saint. 

The eighth incarnation follows soon. She 
is again born to great station ; but the people 
are poor, the duties heavy, and the place 
lonely. She meets a cavalier who is richer 
and more dashing in manner than her lord. 
She has two children, a boy of seven and a 
girl of five. Her lord is killed. While his 
corse still lies in the castle, the cavalier comes 
for her. The rear walls of her castle are 
washed by a stream that, in a rocky channel, 
hidden by dense growths of shrubbery, runs to 
the sea. She takes the children to the second 
story, opens a casement, grasps the boy and 
throws him out. The unsuspecting child 
turns, grasps a point of rock and looks up, 
only to see his sister follow him. Her head 
strikes upon a rock, killing her instantly. The 
boy knows how to swim ; getting one arm 
around his sister, he struggles manfully ; but 
the current is heavy and swift, and his small 



22 SOULS. 

strength is soon exhausted. The mother leans 
far out of the casement and watches this strug- 
gle in the stream. Satisfied that the struggle 
is ended, she gathers her jewels, and rides 
away with the gay, plumed cavalier. 

In the next or ninth incarnation, she is 
Milton's daughter Dorothy. The tenth is in 
the United States, and is not yet finished. 

In the same period of time in which the soul 
of Alexander the Great has had more than 
eight hundred incarnations, this one of St. 
Elizabeth has had but ten. 

Thus far, the soul of Alexander the Great 
has occupied the bodies of men; the soul of St. 
Elizabeth, those of women. A soul who started 
at the same time as these two and has had 
nearly seven hundred incarnations, has occu- 
pied both kinds of bodies ; and in some periods 
alternated quite regularly between them ; and 
this soul is incarnate in the United States 
to-day. 

The following are some of the conclusions 
which the author has reached in examining 
the non- physical records on our planet: — 

A globule in building a crystal body works 
with conscious intelligence, as does a soul in 
building its body of flesh. The mineral world 
is alive ; wherever is life is consciousness ; and 



EDUCATION. 23 

everything from a crystal to a purified soul has 
intelligence after its kind. 

The soul is of no time, country, race, sex, 
creed, nor family ties. The parents of Alex- 
ander the Great in this incarnation have never 
been his parents before ; and in this last incar- 
nation, St. Elizabeth has borne some children 
whose souls have been through hundreds of 
incarnations, and her husband had had more 
than five hundred, in contrast to her ten. When 
souls just beginning development, and souls in 
the phase of purification are put together in 
families, there must needs be friction ; but let 
not the soul undergoing purification shrink 
from the contact — he is their means of devel- 
opment ; they his means of purification. 

The soul is not only developed and purified, 
it pays the debts which it contracts with other 
souls on its journey: but not every soul is so 
fortunate as was that of Alexander the Great, 
when he died to save from harm the same soul 
whom he had so grievously wronged ; for souls 
pass beyond earthly incarnations, and the 
debtors left behind pay to some other soul, as 
a man pays the son a debt he could not or did 
not pay the father. 

The conditions of development, purification, 
and payment are sufficient, suit themselves to 



24 SOULS. 

every soul wherever on its journey it may be, 
and are not cruel. The prison door is opened, 
the slave set free, the Indian dies, when the 
purpose of the incarnation is fulfilled. And the 
payments are willingly made ; the Indian has 
ample opportunity to refuse to die. 

Every soul is where it needs to be ; and if 
it turn aside from the duties and relations of 
the station to which it is born, to follow its 
own desires, whether to dispense charities as 
did St. Elizabeth, or to seek truth in Persia as 
did the Boston incarnation of Alexander the 
Great, it retards its welfare. 

No soul is forced. Opportunity is given : 
the soul uses or abuses that opportunity as it 
pleases. For three successive incarnations, the 
soul of St. Elizabeth was given to learn the 
duties of high birth. In the first, she gave 
Jjerself up to the delights of luxury and flat- 
tery ; in the second, she refused her duties as 
queen to dispense charities, although all the 
virtues and strength which she could command 
were needed on the throne which she first neg- 
lected and then vacated ; and in the third, she 
committed crimes to give herself variety. 

In each incarnation, the soul is set a special 
task, and all the conditions necessary for that 
task are provided for it. The soul is free to 



EDUCATION. 25 

refuse to make use of those conditions, and it 
may reject altogether the task assigned ; but 
in another incarnation it meets that same task, 
amid new conditions and a different company 
of souls. The soul may continue to refuse, 
setting its will persistently through successive 
incarnations against the conditions which 
would otherwise develop, purify, and free it 
from debt. 



CHAPTER II. 

WHERE SOULS COME FROM ; AND WHAT DETER- 
MINES THE FREQUENCY OF INCARNATIONS. 

As a man may take off his coat and put it 
on again, so may a soul lay aside its body and 
resume it. When a soul leaves its body, it 
finds itself surrounded by a substance which is 
to the non-physical realm what water is to the 
physical; and this substance will be called non- 
physical water. This non-physical water per- 
meates the physical air and penetrates and 
passes through all physical objects. As light 
passes through glass, so may this water and 
all objects which float in it pass through 
any physical solid. 

In this non-physical water, a soul free from 

its body may float and direct its motion. 

Without physical exertion it may rise, descend, 

poise for rest, or move swiftly forward as it 

pleases. The soul does this by apowerwithin; 

and to use that power requires effort, and 

wearies the soul as effort wearies the body in 

the physical world. 

Will the reader follow a soul who has laid 
26 



SOURCE. 27 

aside its body ? This soul, rising, reaches the 
limits of the physical air, and finds that the 
non-physical water fills the spaces between the 
worlds. Passing beyond the limits of our 
solar system, innumerable systems are 
seen. They are above, below, around ; some 
systems have one sun, some have two ; and 
these suns draw after them planets, as our 
earth draws the moon ; and the suns whirl 
on their axes and move through the non-phys- 
ical water as animated balls of fire might 
move through physical water. 

The spaces grow wider, the suns larger and 
their motions more terribly swift. Then ap- 
pears a space so wide that the spaces already 
passed are less than a mountain brook to the 
Amazon River ; and the substance which fills 
that space is to the non-physical water what 
air is to the physical water ; and as a man 
walking over solid earth stops before a chasm, 
so halted this soul at the edge of that space. 

Beyond this space, was a mass of moving 
cloud: the cloud looked thin, but was impen- 
etrable. The cloud parted, and there was 
seen within it a small section of what seemed 
to be a sphere, but different from all the 
worlds and suns seen on the journey. From 
this section projected a narrow shelf; and, see- 



28 SOULS. 

ing this, the attempt was made to cross the 
space. As a bird, after a long flight over the 
sea, falls exhausted upon the shore, so fell this 
soul upon the edge of that shelf. 

An opening is seen ; passing that opening, 
this soul is within a hollow sphere whose size 
makes the largest sun seen on the journey 
seem but a toy. Within this sphere is another, 
and it has openings. Passing through one of 
these, this sphere too is seen to be hollow and 
to contain another sphere. In this manner, are 
passed nine hollow spheres, one sphere within 
another. In the center of the ninth, is the 
frame of a cube. The frame is made of slender 
bars — two bars joined at a right angle passing 
along each of the twelve edges of the cube. 
This cubical frame is small compared with the 
space in which it rests. Within this cube, is a 
sphere which is somewhat smaller than the 
cube could have contained had its sides been 
completed. This sphere is suspended within 
the cubical frame but does not touch it. At 
the topmost point of this sphere issues a flame. 
It was not physical fire, but looked more like 
the flame from burning hydrogen than any 
other thing seen upon earth. 

This soul advanced, stood near the cube, and 
drew a breath of what came from the flame, as 



SOURCE. 29 

a man may draw in the hot air which vibrates 
from a flame of physical fire. That breath 
renewed the strength, and cleared and in- 
creased the power of vision. 

The nine spheres were separated by spaces ; 
and all the nine were divided by a plane, which 
extended a little beyond the outermost and 
made the shelf upon which this soul had 
alighted. This plane did not cut the spheres 
at the center ; for the part of the spheres above 
the plane was much greater than the part 
below. Above the plane, at the center, and 
resting on the plane, was the cubical frame 
which enclosed the sphere from which issued 
the flame ; and this was surrounded by the 
nine hollow spheres. The nine spheres in- 
creased in thickness and density from the 
inner to the outer, and decreased in transpar- 
ency and beauty ; but of density and decrease 
there it is hardly becoming to speak, since the 
mind of man cannot conceive of the outermost 
of the nine. 

These great spheres were composed of small 
spheres suspended side by side. These small 
spheres will be called globes to distinguish 
them from the nine great spheres. These 
globes seemed to be of a substance similar to 
that of the globules which were seen floating 



30 SOULS. 

over the mineral matter on earth, but were of 
much greater size. 

This soul then passed to the shelf on which 
it had alighted. A great space, like a great 
gulf, divided these nine spheres from the worlds 
beyond. Those worlds moved in a flowing sub- 
stance, — the non-physical water, which like a 
belt surrounded the gulf. The worlds were 
gathered into systems similar to our own ; 
these smaller systems revolved about greater 
suns ; and the greater suns moved in the arc 
of the great belt. The belt was divided into 
zones ; and the whole was to the central 
spheres as the rings of Saturn to that planet. 
Of these zones in the- belt, ten were counted. 
What was beyond was not known. [See 
Appendix II.] There was a limit to vision, 
and that limit was as the haze which hides the 
landscape from physical sight. Our solar sys- 
tem was in the fifth of these zones, counting 
from the gulf ; and, amid that throng of mov- 
ing suns, our sun was in size but as a bubble 
of air in a river, and our planet earth less than 
a grain of dust. 

Returning to the innermost of the nine 
spheres, it was seen that from the flame issue 
rays. These rays may be compared to the 
waves of heat which pass from an open physi- 



SOURCE. 3 1 

cal fire, but with this difference, — the rays 
were collected into bundles, and these bundles 
separated one from another. These rays 
moved upward- and outward ; and, touching 
globes in any one of the nine spheres, the 
globes were projected before them. To reach 
globes in the outer spheres, these rays passed 
through the openings between the globes in 
the inner spheres ; and no globes were affected 
but the ones whom the rays directly touched. 
The globes that were so selected were pro- 
jected in pairs, and the members of the pairs 
were not from the same sphere. 

From the shelf-projection of the plane, one 
of these pairs of globes was watched. The 
rays lengthened, going farther and farther, 
and ever supporting and projecting before 
them the two globes. The farther they went, 
the smaller grew the globes, the rays con- 
stantly withdrawing into themselves some of 
the substance of the globes; until, when pro- 
jection ceased, the globes had become globules 
like those which were seen upon earth. 

The projection of these two ended, the rays 
disengaged themselves, and left the globules 
suspended in the non-physical water; and the 
globules seemed troubled and at a loss what 
to do for want, each of its sustaining ray. 



32 SOULS. 

But the rays were not withdrawn; they 
descended, bending so as to form the opposite 
side of an immense ellipse, the other side of 
which they had traversed in projection. In 
this descent, the rays entered a physical mass 
such as the mineral of our earth; and the 
farther ends of the rays remained stationary 
until the globules felt their presence, and seek- 
ing them entered that mineral matter. 

Watching various rays, it was seen that it 
is these rays who, each ever hovering in front, 
first of the globule and then of the soul, like 
a magnet, draws it back over its long and 
weary way. Projected swiftly, it returns 
slowly through mineral, vegetable, human, and 
other forms, while ages and ages pass away. 

This visitor from earth must return. Hav- 
ing reached earth, this soul paused beside its 
physical body. As a coarse, ugly block of 
wood to the purest mountain air was that body 
to the objects recently seen: and as a man 
puts on a heavy and ill-fitting garment, and 
takes up for use a poor and a dull tool; so this 
soul put on that garment of flesh, and began 
once more to use a physical brain. 

The consciousness of this human being is 
two - fold, — the consciousness of the body, 
including the, physical brain with what it has 



SOURCE. ss 

gathered of knowledge and experience in the 
present incarnation, and the consciousness of 
the soul. This being may pass from the one 
consciousness to the other, as a man may step 
from one room of his house into another. As 
a child is conscious of its physical senses and 
takes pleasure in using them, but knows noth- 
ing of the powers and capacities of the brain 
lying behind these senses, which powers and 
capacities it takes years of training and exper- 
ience to develop, so is this being in soul con- 
sciousness — conscious of the soul's senses and 
of the possibility of using them, but as yet of 
barely anything more. 

Each globule on earth has a ray, the ray 
who projected it; and each ray leads the globule 
until it becomes a soul, and leads the soul until 
it is developed, purified, and its debts paid; 
and, evermore, the ray gives of itself all which 
the globule or soul can receive. 

These rays take note of the prayers of men 
— each ray of the prayers of the soul whom it 
attends — ; and prayers are answered, not always 
on the same day or in the same incarnation, but 
finally answered. The prayers of men have 
no necessary connection with the wojds which 
fall from the lips of their bodies. The words 
of men are, for the most part, like the phantoms 



34 SOULS. 

of their imaginations, — there are no realities 
behind them; and the rays who guide men 
take note of realities only. The realities of a 
man's prayer are the desires in his soul, and 
these desires are shown by what he does. If 
those desires ask for material good, that 
material good is given just as soon, and in as 
great fullness as the welfare of the soul, and 
of other souls connected with it, will allow; if 
those desires ask for intellectual stores or 
fame, they too are granted under the same 
conditions as the material; but when a soul 
asks for strength to do its duties, courage to 
meet its difficulties, wisdom to bear its respon- 
sibilities, or more love and tenderness for 
other souls, or for gifts like these, the response 
is immediate — the ray gives of itself and the 
praying soul is enlarged and strengthened 
thereby to the measure and the quality of its 
need. 

When a man prays in church, at his table, or 
in the privacy of his own room for the spread 
of good; and then goes out and forecloses the 
mortgage on his struggling neighbor's prop- 
erty, uses the ignorance or carelessness of 
another man to increase his own gains, puts 
the wages of his employees at the lowest 
figure, takes the shelter from the widow and 



COMPANIONS. 35 

the opportunity from the orphan because they 
are weak and he is strong, or uses of another's 
goods for his own advancement or comfort 
and does not return the same, — his prayer 
also is answered; and that which he has 
created for others, and spread abroad by his 
example will he himself enjoy at some future 
time. 

Deeds like these often come from ignorance; 
and so long as a soul is ignorant, it must be 
educated, and most souls seem unable to learn 
anything but by experience. So, what a man 
does to his neighbors in one incarnation, that 
will his neighbors do to him in another ; until 
souls are less ignorant, are able to dwell to- 
gether in peace, and to make efforts to mutu- 
ally help and sustain one another. The soul 
who does such evil deeds, not ignorantly, but 
knowing the pain which they cause, by such 
act puts itself into the class of those who refuse 
to develop and purify themselves. 

We have seen that the globules from 
the seven spheres were projected in pairs. 
The members of these pairs keep quite 
close together through the first two stages, — 
the mineral and vegetable. Entering upon the 
third stage — the human — the will of the globule 
or soul and its passions become more pro- 



36 SOULS. 

nounced : and these passions separate the mem- 
bers of each pair, more or less, depending upon 
the nature of the passions ; and sometimes they 
are apart for thousands of years. 

The companion -soul who started with the 
soul of Alexander the Great, and was his wife 
in the first three incarnations, has had between 
six and seven hundred incarnations ; and, in 
four -fifths of these, the two have met. This 
companion -soul has often occupied the bodies 
of men. In these incarnations, when the two 
men have met, they have been friends ; and, in 
some cases, that friendship has been of much 
value to one or the other of them. In two 
incarnations, they met for a short time only — 
in one for a few hours, in the other for a few 
days ; but these meetings neither of the men 
ever forgot. In some cases, the two have been 
born far apart, and yet have met — once when 
half the circumference of the earth divided 
their birthplaces. 

The companion -soul to that of St. Elizabeth 
was the husband of her first two incarnations, 
in the latter of which she abandoned his chil- 
dren before his body was cold. In the third, 
she did not meet this soul until after she had 
begun her infamous life. When they did meet, 
his efforts to save her were pathetic, but una- 



COMPANIONS. 37 

vailing. In the fourth, he was her father, the 
gardener ; and it was his love for her which 
drew her to his house — a better place than she 
deserved or could have entered but for his love. 
In the fifth, he was the pastor of the church to 
which she belonged ; and it was his teachings 
which gave her courage to die. In the sixth, 
he was the baron ; in the seventh, the king; in 
the eighth, the lord to whose death she was a 
party, and whose children she threw into the 
stream; and, in the present, her husband again. 
Thus far, this soul, although it has had hundreds 
of incarnations, and a wide range of expe- 
riences, has watched over the soul of St. Eliza- 
beth and tried to help her in nine of her ten 
incarnations. 

Sometimes a soul who needs not to come 
voluntarily enters into the limitations of a poor 
incarnation for the purpose of protecting its 
companion-soul who desires to incarnate. 

The members of these pairs, when originally 
started, are selected from different spheres; and, 
at starting, are not of the same size, for the globes 
that make up the nine hollow spheres decrease in 
size from the outer to the inner sphere ; but the 
projecting ray absorbs from each, so that when 
the two globes end in globules and begin their 
earth -journey, they are of about the same size. 



38 SOULS. 

The globes that make up the nine spheres 
vary greatly. All in the same sphere have the 
same dominant quality, which may be called 
the core of the sphere. About this core, in each, 
are grouped other qualities in such variety and 
degree as to make its individuality, and differ- 
entiate it from the other globes in the same 
sphere. In the process of projection, this core 
is not absorbed by the ray, but all else is ; so 
that each globule, at starting, is a mass of sub- 
stance in which inheres a single tendency. In 
the long journey back, the globule or soul re- 
ceives from the ray what is lost in projection. 
On entering the third stage, the will of the soul 
begins to modify what is received back by what 
is gained of earthly experience, in such a man- 
ner that the original combination of qualities 
is gradually changed, and the dominant quality 
itself may give place to another which has 
become more powerful. 

These changes which are produced by the 
freewill of a soul determine that soul's place 
when, through all of its journeyings, it returns 
to the central spheres. A globe who started 
from the innermost may be obliged to take a 
place in the outermost; from one place in a 
sphere find its place on returning in another; 
and from a portion of the spheres above the 



CLASSES. 39 

plane may take a place on return below the 
plane. The reverse is true also ; globes from 
the outer are advanced to the inner, and 
from places below to places above — each soul's 
place depending on the amount and quality of 
what it brings from its career. 

The companions, starting together with un- 
like tendencies, may be of great help to each 
other in gathering, about the dominant tenden- 
cy in each, the qualities necessary to complete 
itself as a many-sided being, or to so trans- 
form the being that this dominant tendency 
gives place to a higher one ; but as the com- 
panion has power to help, so has he to hinder, 
and to lead to the exchange of a higher for a 
lower dominant tendency. What is true of 
these companions is true in a less degree of 
all souls, — each helps or hinders all whom it 
meets or passes in each incarnation of the long 
journey. 

These dominant tendencies largely deter- 
mine the frequency of incarnations, and the 
length of time it takes a soul to finish its 
earthly career. 

Of these tendencies, the most unresting is 
the passion to know. Souls who are domi- 
nated by this passion pass from one incarna- 
tion to another rapidly, seek a wide variety of 



4° SOULS. 

experience, shrink from attempting nothing 
which opportunities allow, and finish their 
incarnations soon. 

The next in order of frequency are the souls 
whose dominant passion is to help. The incar- 
nations of these do not follow one another so 
rapidly as those of the first class ; but they 
accomplish more for the soul's welfare in a 
given incarnation, and get through as soon. 
In number of incarnations, souls of these two 
classes may be as eight to six and yet finish in 
the same period. This class of souls has the 
least number of incarnations. 

These two are the only dominant tendencies 
which carry souls through the earth journey 
quickly. The time is long, as men think of 
time ; but short in comparison with the time 
which it takes souls of other classes to finish. 

Of the other classes, the slowest of all is 
that of souls whose dominant passion is to 
enjoy. The period taken by these may be 
hundreds of times as long as that of the first 
two classes ; and the number of incarnations 
that are required may extend into the thou- 
sands. 

Souls of the first class generally seek the 
bodies of men ; souls of the second class seem 
to be indifferent of sex ; souls of the last class 



CLASSES. 41 

are found in both kinds of bodies ; and souls 
of all classes change, more or less, from one 
kind of body to another in successive incarna- 
tions. Souls of the first two classes seem 
indifferent to the quality of the incarnation, 
caring mainly for places which promise oppor- 
tunities for the exercise of their dominant pas- 
sions ; while souls of the last class seek — but 
by no means always get — the cradles of the 
rich. 

Throughout the third stage — the stage of 
human development — souls are largely free to 
choose their places of birth : the ray indeed 
draws, but every soul is free to resist. In the 
fourth stage also, the soul is free, but more 
sensitive and more likely to obey the guiding 
influence of the ray. Souls are influenced, in 
this matter, a good deal by the loves of other 
souls, as is shown in the case of St. Elizabeth. 
This does not mean previous family relations ; 
because, aside from the tie of companion souls, 
most family loves die with the incarnation 
which gave them birth. When two souls who 
did not start as companions live a happy 
wedded life in one incarnation, that love may 
appear in another as a friendship, or even draw 
them into the same family as brother and sis- 
ter ; and a strong friendship will act in the 



42 SOULS. 

same way. As helpful associations in one 
incarnation draw people to meet in a subse- 
quent one, so do hurtful. 

Souls of the first class more easily cast off 
vices which they contract on their journey 
than those of any other class. In two incar- 
nations, the soul of Alexander the Great cast 
off all of its flagrant vices ; while it would have 
taken a soul of the last class many incarna- 
tions of imprisonment, slavery, or similar dis- 
cipline to cast off those same vices. This is 
partly owing to the fact that a soul of the first 
class is more likely to gratify its cravings 
openly on the physical plane ; while those of 
the last class secrete them, sometimes to the 
extent of no expression on the physical plane. 
As an ulcer on an internal, vital organ will 
more quickly destroy the body than the same 
ulcer on the external flesh; so these secret 
vices make more permanent impression on the 
soul itself, and are more difficult to cast off in 
subsequent incarnations. 

To souls of the first class, the world is in- 
debted for most of its original research in 
science and history, its explorations and in- 
ventions ; to those of the second class, its best 
literature, art, and religious inspiration ; and to 
the last, its luxurious material comforts, for it 



CLASSES. 43 

is this class who creates the demand which 
applies the products of the first two classes to 
the enjoyments and amusements of life. 

Of souls of the first two classes, there are 
never many on earth at any one time ; while 
the other classes make up the masses of men 
in all countries. 



CHAPTER III. 

WHERE SOULS ARE BETWEEN INCARNATIONS ; 

AND WHAT BECOMES OF SOULS WHO 

REFUSE TO DEVELOP AND 

PURIFY THEMSELVES. 

As night to day, so is the period between 
two incarnations to an incarnation ; and the 
effect which night has upon the physical body, 
has this period upon the soul. As the proper 
use of the hours of night is sleep, so the 
proper use of the time between two incarna- 
tions is rest, in preparation for the activities of 
the next day, that is, the next incarnation. 
As men turn night into day in study, in wake- 
ful anxiety about affairs, in watching by the 
sick and the troubled, in social amusements 
and revelries, and in the pursuit of vice and 
crime — each snatching but a few fitful hours of 
sleep before dawn — ; so may souls spend the 
time between incarnations. As men enter 
upon the labors of a day which follows a wake- 
ful night heavy, stupid and sleepy ; so do souls 
enter upon incarnations which follow such 
misused rest periods. 

44 



BE TWEEN INCARNA TIONS. 4 5 

When a globule or soul incarnates it forms for 
itself two bodies, a physical and a non-physical. 
This is true of the globule or soul throughout 
the mineral and vegetable stages, as well 
as throughout the human career ; and no 
globule or soul can reincarnate until divested 
of both of these bodies. What the physical 
body is to the physical world, the non-physi- 
cal body is to that part of the non-physical 
world which is in close contact with the sur- 
face of our planet. 

An object in the non-physical world may 
exist in the same space as an object in the 
physical world, and neither be affected by the 
other ; and a person who can command the 
use of both the physical and non-physical 
sight may see both objects at the same time, 
and be at no loss to distinguish them. 

During incarnation, the non-physical body 
is inside the physical, and more or less closely 
coincides with it. What men know as death 
is the withdrawal of this non-physical body ; 
for rarely does a soul divest itself of both 
bodies at once. A soul encased in its non- 
physical body emerges into the non-physical 
world, and for the first time becomes con- 
scious of that world. This is true of all who 
have not developed the non-physical senses 



46 SOULS. 

during life in the outer body. By this laying 
off the physical body, a soul changes itself in 
no particular, any more than a man changes 
himself in removing his outer garments. The 
soul still possesses the knowledges, affections, 
opinions, and desires which it had at the time 
of physical death ; and nothing more, save as 
it is gained through means similar to those 
used during life in the physical body, — by use 
of the non-physical senses, either independ- 
ently or through the experiences of others 
in the same realm. 

The souls of men are a part of the planet 
until all of their incarnations on earth are 
ended ; and the time which passes between in- 
carnations is spent on earth as truly as the 
time of incarnations. 

What is true of the death of men, is true of 
the death of plants and minerals, — death is the 
withdrawal from the physical of the non-phy- 
sical bodies. The non-physical bodies of 
minerals and plants make up the landscape of 
that part of the non-physical world into which 
man emerges at death ; and all of these ob- 
jects bear to him the same relations in his 
non-physical body, as do the physical objects 
to his physical body before death. 

The formation of the non-physical body, in 



BE TWEEN INCARNA TIQNS. 4 7 

all phases of the soul's life, is alike in essen- 
tial features, the difference being in degree — 
the non-physical bodies in each stage of 
growth following closely the analogies hinted 
by the physical forms of that stage. 

At birth, a baby has both kinds of bodies ; 
and if the baby dies, the non-physical is drawn 
free from the physical, as a surgeon may peel 
the delicate, connective tissue from a bundle 
of muscular fiber. Both bodies are at birth 
the product of the parent life, and repre- 
sent the matrix from which they came ; and 
both bodies grow according to the conditions 
of their environment. Whatever be the soul 
attached to these bodies, it can not entirely 
overcome the conditions of birth and early 
opportunity. A strong soul, fully awake, 
makes efforts to shape and develop the grow- 
ing bodies to serve its needs ; but the results 
of these efforts are largely dependent on the 
amount and quality of the materials furnished. 
Undeveloped souls, and souls half or wholly 
asleep are at the mercy of the conditions of 
birth and of such opportunities for the growth 
and development of both bodies as are pro- 
vided by the parents and environment. 

Each of the two bodies is an aggregate of 
particles which are held together by the bind- 



48 SOULS. 

ing power of the soul, who is the source of the 
cohesion and unification of these particles into 
one vitalized whole. The particles of the phys- 
ical are grosser than those of the non- physical, 
and are replenished by different forces. 

The physical body grows by means of food 
and motion; the non -physical, by means of 
ideas and mental activity. Thought draws 
from the non -physical world the particles 
needed to replenish the non -physical body, as 
physical substances are taken to replace the 
waste of physical particles. As the growth of 
the physical body depends first on the body of 
the mother, and later on the amount and qual- 
ity of the food and exercise taken ; so the 
growth of the non -physical body depends first 
on the thoughts of the parents, and later on 
those which the soul itself encourages and in- 
dulges. 

As the physical body may become diseased, 
deformed, prematurely old, or stiff and rigid 
by improper food and physical habits ; so the 
non -physical body is in all particulars an 
effect of the thoughts and mental sensations 
habitually pursued by the soul. As the time 
comes when the physical body may be healed, 
changed, or restored to suppleness and strength 
with difficulty and by prolonged efforts only ; 



BE TWEEN INCARNA TIONS. 49 

so the non- physical body may become diffi- 
cult to change or restore. Both bodies may 
pass beyond the control of the soul ; and as 
the physical body by over-indulgence becomes 
a tyrant, so does the non -physical. The two 
bodies do not necessarily follow one another 
in development and condition. A man may 
be an ascetic in the physical body, and a 
glutton in the non - physical ; healthy, sound, 
and clean in the former, and diseased, broken, 
and foul in the latter. Moreover, a man may 
have a large and fine physical frame, and a 
small and deformed non -physical frame. 

These two bodies make up the personality 
of a soul in any given incarnation ; and are, 
for the most part, all that men know of one 
another. Rarely does a man show his soul, 
even to his friends ; and human beings may 
pass long lives in one another's company with- 
out penetrating in each beyond the non -phys- 
ical body or mind. This is why so many 
doubt the existence of anything more than 
mind ; and the materialist says truly that mind 
perishes, for one of these bodies is as perish- 
able as the other. 

Although equally perishable, both bodies 
do not often die at the same time. Many a 
man dies to the physical world while his 



50 SOULS. 

thoughts and mental sensations about all mat- 
ters connected with that world are as vigorous 
as ever, and capable of going on for many 
years ; and such do go on. The conditions of 
activity in the non- physical world are such 
that a vigorous non -physical body may con- 
tinue to exist hundreds of years after the death 
of the physical body ; and, for a portion of 
that time, the soul is fastened to that non- 
physical body as truly as to the physical before 
physical death ; and no soul can enter upon 
the legitimate sleep of its night until freed 
from that non - physical body. The non - phys- 
ical, as the physical, dies only when the forces 
within it are exhausted or withdrawn; for every 
cause proceeds to its proper and ultimate 
effect. 

As a tree, cut down in spring, when full of 
sap, will, if not otherwise mutilated, go on 
growing and giving forth some leaves during 
the summer ; so the body of a man may, after 
being abandoned by a soul, go on for some 
time by means of the vitality which is stored 
up within its cells. Such cases of abandon- 
ment in the physical world are not common, 
but they occur ; and, in some cases, the body so 
abandoned goes on performing the common 
functions of physical and non -physical life for 



BETWEEN INCAKNA T10NS. 5 1 

several years. Death to such an one is the 
withdrawal of the non- physical body; and 
that soulless non -physical body continues to 
exist in the non -physical world until its stored 
vitality is exhausted. In the non -physical 
world cases of abandonment are common ; and 
the greater power of the non -physical body to 
store vitality makes these soulless non -phys- 
ical bodies go on, often for long periods. 

There are many reasons why a soul may de- 
sire to abandon its bodies. Egotism and 
dogmatism in thought harden the non -phys- 
ical body rapidly ; and such hardening, espe- 
cially if it take place early, makes an abode 
which may be as suffocating to a soul as tight 
clothing is to the physical body. Vice, cruelty, 
and hypocricy make conditions in the non- 
physical body which may be as offensive to a 
soul's senses as is putrefaction to the physical 
senses. But a soul may not always leave when 
it desires to ; and, during the later years of an 
incarnation, a soul may find itself as a man 
would be if chained to an automaton, and 
forced to keep it going, no matter how intol- 
erable its conduct. Souls, or the parents of 
their bodies, are responsible for the commence- 
ment of such conditions ; but a soul is some- 
times as blind to the tendencies it encourages 



52 SOULS. 

as are the mere personalities of men. A per- 
sonality that at first may have been mobile 
aud responsive to each movement of the soul 
may become the master, and rush headlong 
into conditions which the soul never dreamed 
of The object of an incarnation is not the 
development of a personality, nor its enjoy- 
ments, but the growth of a soul ; and a soul 
wakes up to this fact sometimes too late to 
to make amends for its lost opportunities. 
Also, a soul may continue to be blind or 
indolent to its own needs, and the personality 
go on growing and fattening on the vitality of 
the soul until physical death releases the strong 
mind into the non- physical world; and when 
the soul finally escapes from that mind, it may 
have lost all, or nearly all, it had gained in 
many incarnations, and be obliged at the next 
incarnation to begin again at a lower stage of 
development. Sometimes this retrogression 
goes on through successive incarnations, until 
the soul has lost the attributes which gave it 
human rights ; and while still capable of return 
to human bodies, is forced temporarily to 
incarnate in the body of a beast ; and there 
may be several such incarnations before the 
soul is able to incarnate again in the upward 
current of development. 



BE TWEEN INCARNA TIONS. 5 3 

The non-physical portion of our planet 
extends from the outer layers of the air to a 
considerable depth within the earth. In this 
region, the non-physical world is modified in 
such a manner that it is to the physical earth 
and atmosphere what the non-physical body of 
man is to the physical. This region is divided 
into zones, some of which are sharply defined. 

That portion of this region which is in the 
atmosphere is divided into four zones of about 
equal depth. The lowest of these zones is 
largely a reproduction, in non-physical parti- 
cles, of the physical conditions which exist in 
the same space, with some of the same sorts 
of differences in all phases as are found 
between the physical and non-physical bodies 
of men. In the second zone, there is nothing 
but a few objects on its lower surface, where 
it rests upon the upper layers of the first zone. 
The third zone is different. It is a sphere 
which encloses the earth at one-half the depth 
of the air from its surface, is about one-fourth 
of the air in thickness, and separated from the 
first zone by a space as wide as itself, mostly 
empty of objects, and filled with a medium 
rarer than that of the first zone. 

The third zone is — to eyes fresh from the 
sights on the physical earth and in the first 



54 SOULS. 

zone of the non-physical — a land of surprises. 
There are mountains and valleys, forests and 
meadows, flowers and fruits, and a sky and 
clouds of changing tints and forms ; for there 
are the souls of minerals, plants, and all things 
upon the surface of the physical earth which 
have cast both bodies, and been able to rise to 
that height. There is soul only ; but soul is 
substance, and all objects there are as substan- 
tial and real to the soul, as is the physical 
world to the man in a physical body. 

Passing from the surface of the earth down- 
wards, in the second zone of that part of the 
non-physical world which is within the body 
of the earth, is a series of caverns. These 
caverns are connected by winding passages, 
and descend ever deeper and deeper. In 
these caverns and passages are objects and 
conditions for which the author's experiences 
on the physical plane furnish but few and 
poor analogies. 

When a soul has used an incarnation for 
soul purposes mainly, it feels, as death 
approaches, the ray drawing it upward ; and 
obeying an impulse from within— of which it is 
often unconscious — it gradually loosens its 
affections from material objects and from per- 
sons. By this process, the soul draws, little 



BETWEEN INCARNATIONS. 55 

by little, the vitality from both of its bodies. 
When the vitality is all withdrawn from the 
physical body, the soul leaves that ; and, 
entering the first zone of the non-physical, a 
few hours, days, or weeks later it withdraws 
from the non-physical body, and rises through 
the first two zones to the third, where it re- 
mains until ready for another incarnation. 
The non-physical body which is left by such a 
soul may continue to move about stupidly for 
a few days, or it may not. In either case, it 
soon falls and begins to decay. These non- 
physical bodies may be seen on the floor of 
the first zone in all stages of decay, as are the 
bodies of marine animals on the ocean floor, 
and the process of their decay is similar. 

Souls of such as have lived a fairly good 
life, but whose desires cling strongly to 
material possessions or family loves take a 
much longer time to free themselves from the 
second body ; and it often requires much faith 
and courage to make the effort. The time 
depends a good deal upon the conditions of 
thought and feeling of those persons, still 
alive in physical bodies, in whom the given 
soul is most interested. These souls make 
efforts to assist one another, to make whole- 
some and comfortable conditions for one 



56 SOULS. 

another, in all sorts of ways, similar to those 
used in the physical world. Not finding, on 
leaving the physical body, any such conditions 
as the heaven, which they have heard of and 
perhaps believed in ; but, on the contrary, 
what seems more like a hell ; and being met 
by relatives or friends who had died, perhaps 
many years before, and who assure them there 
is nothing better, for having wandered about 
a good deal worse places only have been 
seen, — these often settle down to their 
fate, and make the best of it. But the con- 
viction usually remains that there ought to 
be something better ; and when the forces 
in the non-physical body are at such a point 
that it may be cast off, and the soul within 
is sufficiently purified from grossness to be 
able to rise, there is sure to be some one 
to show how to cast the second body — 
sometimes a painful process — and to lead the 
way to the third zone. 

With those who, during incarnation, have 
ignored the existence or needs of the soul, or 
committed gross crimes, or lived a life of 
studied hypocrisy, the experiences and results 
are different. If the personality of one of 
these be weak, the non-physical body is soon 
cast ; but the soul, incapable of rising because 



BE TWEEN INCARNA TIONS. 5 7 

of its grossness, and finding the presence of 
souls unlike itself disagreeable, descends to 
the caverns, seeks its own kind, and among 
them, at whatever depth, it stays until the 
time for reincarnation comes. If the person- 
ality be strong, the soul remains in the first 
zone, tries by every means in its power to 
prolong the life of its non-physical body, and 
spends the time in ways agreeable to itself. 
These ways might astonish men if the forces 
at work within these souls and their personali- 
ties were not known. 

Men and women who have persisted in 
believing that there is no such things as soul, 
that the physical brain is all, and the physical 
molecule the beginning and end of existence 
are likely, on withdrawing from the physical 
body, to be at first much astonished. Then, 
finding no heaven and no angels, such as they 
had ignored and scoffed at while alive in the 
physical body ; and reasoning as they did 
before physical death that what they see is all, 
— these frequently exhibit what seems a trans- 
formation of character. The respectable 
savant of the physical world may give himself 
in the non-physical world to the grossest crimes 
against those in the same zone with himself : 
and seek by malicious, mischievous, and cruel 



53 SOULS. 

trickery to annoy and hinder men still living 
in bodies of flesh ; and to dissuade them, not 
only from holy aspirations and deeds of good- 
ness, but from efforts of any sort beyond the 
enjoyment of sensual, material passions. The 
first zone of the non-physical earth rests on 
the physical surface of the planet ; and beings 
like these are, in the streets of cities, about as 
common as men. Many a good resolution, 
many a kindly impulse, many a noble purpose 
is set aside or thwarted by the influence of 
these beings ; and the stronger the personal- 
ity before physical death, the longer they live, 
and the more harm they do in the non-physi- 
cal realm. The end of each one of them is to part 
at last from the non-physical body, and descend 
to the caverns. 

What is true of the materialistic savant is 
true of the religious and charitable hypocrite ; 
and, in varying degrees, of all misguided, sel- 
fish, cruel, and criminal men, women, and chil- 
dren. Children do not all go to the third zone 
any more than do adults. If a soul came from 
the caverns below into incarnation, the fact of 
having passed a few years attached to a grow- 
ing child neither fits the soul, nor gives it the 
right to go to the third zone. The souls of 
young children, for the most part, return to 



BE TWEEN INCARNA TIONS. 59 

the places whence they came. The variations 
from this are occasioned by the strong love of 
a good soul who may have become interested 
in the child ; but such love can give only, to 
the child's soul, a more comfortable place, or a 
shorter stay in the caverns, or a better oppor- 
tunity at the next rebirth. 

The time passes with these souls in the cav- 
erns much as it might to a sleeping man hav- 
ing a more or less vivid and continuous night- 
mare ; and this condition lasts from a few 
months to thousands of years — the time in each 
case depending on the desires and conditions 
of the soul. Above, in the third zone, the time 
passes either in dreamless sleep or in activities 
devised to pass the time until suitable places 
of rebirth can be obtained. In the third zone and 
in the caverns, are souls only, and to all in 
both is the end the same, — a return to incarna- 
tion in physical bodies. These days of incar- 
nation will follow these nights in the non-phy- 
sical realms until developed, purified, and its 
debts paid, a soul may go beyond our planet ; 
or having refused to develop, purify, or pay 
debts a soul has entered that company whose 
characteristics must now be given. 

A soul who refuses opportunity and follows 
its own selfish devices is led by its ray from 



60 SOULS. 

place to place, and incarnation to incarnation 
with care to give it fresh impulses toward good 
— led as much as is possible to the freedom of 
the soul itself ; and when that freedom over- 
powers the drawing influence, good associa- 
tions are led to the soul by other rays. Over 
and over and over again the soul is tried, until 
it has thrust out of itself all that it has received 
from its ray, including the dominant passion 
with which the globule started. These por- 
tions of the original globe from the nine spheres, 
as the man thrusts them from him in successive 
incarnations, are gathered up and absorbed by 
the ray. When a man > has expelled the 
last part of that original globe, he is no longer 
conscious of the ray. But the man has still a 
soul ; for this loss can not occur in the early 
stages of human development. At each incar- 
nation, the soul adds to itself and to what is 
received from the ray something gathered from 
its experiences. These additions remain and 
constitute a soul ; and the farther along in its 
career the final loss occurs, and the greater the 
number of incarnations which the soul has had, 
the stronger is this soul who no longer pos- 
sesses anything of the ray. Because such a 
soul is its own and only guide, it is called a lost 
soul. As a strong non-physical body has 



THE LOST. 6 1 

more power of vitality stored up within it than 
has a strong physical body ; so a lost soul has 
much more power of vitality and of prolonging 
its existence than has a strong non-physical 
body. Moreover, a lost soul can reincarnate. 
By means of its developed will and its associa- 
tion with the ray, it has gained some of the 
power of the ray itself. 

Lost souls, in the time between incarnations, 
for the most part, constitute themselves the 
rulers and guardians of the caverns, not because 
any higher power gives them such positions, 
but because they are the strongest souls 
there. A soul however evil, who still pos- 
sesses portions of its ray, is no match for one 
of these ; for in the caverns, character is re- 
versed, — good qualities are weak, and bad 
ones strong. No soul is detained in the 
caverns beyond the time when it begins to 
desire help from its ray. Such desire 
makes its presence intolerable to the lost 
souls ; so it is thrust out, and is free to in- 
carnate again. 

For a time, the length of which depends on 
the strength and qualities of the lost soul, it 
may incarnate in human bodies. Compared to 
the whole number of souls incarnate upon earth 
at any one time, lost souls incarnate in human 



62 SOULS. 

bodies are few ; but they exist, and the fact ex- 
plains some of the phenomenal monsters and 
atrocities of history ; for these lost souls force 
themselves into great places whenever they 
can. This depends on parents themselves; 
lust and cruelty open the door to their own 
kind in every social rank. When no longer 
able to incarnate in human bodies, these lost 
souls resort to beasts : at each step something 
is lost, and the end is utter extinction. 

As these lost souls go downward, they mod- 
ify the forms and natures of men and animals 
to accord with their own attributes. Thus 
have they done from the beginning : and men 
who live on earth to-day are harassed and 
hindered by their products ; for it is these lost 
souls who have produced all types of savage 
men and the whole monstrous progeny of the 
animal world. [See Appendix III.] 

The upward current alone is the creation of 
the globules and the rays : the downward is the 
product of men ; and when men shall cease to 
produce the objects in the downward current, 
it will cease to exist. 

The ray who belonged to a lost soul fol- 
lows it through its downward career. If at 
any point in that career, even when in the body 
of the most loathsome creature, the lost soul 



THE LOST. 63 

feels a movement of desire to become true to 
the laws of that phase of life where it is, that 
desire opens again the possibility of receiving 
from the ray. The ray responds, gives of 
itself; and if the desire continue, the lost soul 
may return once more into the upward current. 
Not until a lost soul is utterly extinct does the 
ray return to its source. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE RELATIONS OF SOULS TO THEIR BODIES. 

That relation which the physical body bears 
to the mind, the mind or non- physical body 
bears to the soul. As there is a limit to phys- 
ical growth, so is there to non - physical ; but 
the limit to the non -physical varies within 
much wider degrees than does that of physical 
growth. When physical growth is attained, 
effort is no longer directed to increase of size, 
but to such training as gives skill and power 
of endurance ; so in the development of mind 
as an instrument for the soul, when the limit 
of capacity is reached, its training should fol- 
low the analogy set by the physical body. 

As the physical body need kernels and not 
husks for its nourishment, so does the mind 
need realities and not symbols ; and as bread 
eaten to-day may not be reeaten to-morrow, 
so a reality which set vital forces building the 
non -physical body this week can not set those 
forces at work next week. New realities are 
as essential to the growth and development of 
the mind as fresh food to those of the body. 
6 4 



BODY AND MIND. 65 

As the body needs more food and more 
activity during the process of growth, and 
thereafter only what is needed to replenish 
waste and keep it supple ; so the mind needs 
more realities and more incessant activities 
during the period of growth than afterward. 
As all physical activities are kept up only by a 
constant breaking down and elimination of old 
molecules, and a constant ingestion and build- 
ing up of new, so are all non- physical activi- 
ties ; and as in all physical foods there is waste, 
so is there in all forms of learning. As the 
body throws out those portions of the ingested 
food which it can not digest and assimilate, 
and all those dead portions whose vitality has 
been exhausted by use ; so should the mind 
expel the waste in its food, and the dead mat- 
ter accruing from its activities. The mind or 
non -physical body should be allowed to do 
this throwing out as freely and spontaneously 
as does the physical body ; and it would do it if 
our methods of education were wholesome and 
natural. 

As different physical bodies vary in regard 
to kinds of food most nourishing and kinds 
most nauseating, so do minds ; and as the same 
physical body varies in this matter from youth 
to age, so does the same mind. To force upon 



66 SOULS. 

all minds the same education, or to force the 
same mind to be consistent with itself from 
youth to age is to force deformity, disease, 
atrophy, and death upon the mind. 

To repress elimination of waste physical 
matter is to bring disease and speedy death to 
the physical body ; to repress the same process 
in the mind is to force upon it congestion, 
hardening, and practical death. When the 
mind ceases to be a responsive instrument for 
soul activities, it ceases to be useful, and life is 
a burden to the soul. Instead of being forced 
to remember and to repeat over and over to 
fasten in memory, a child should be allowed to 
forget. When a child's slate is full, he can 
write no more on it without erasure. If he 
attempts to write over what has already filled 
it, and then to read both, his sight is strained. 
A child's mind is such a slate; and when a par- 
ent or teacher forces the writing over, he does 
as much harm to the child's mental sight as 
the other process would to his physical. The 
child's mind develops until its limit of capac- 
ity is reached ; but only the child himself 
knows its capacity at any given stage of 
growth. The child's mind should be left free 
to keep or to reject any fact, as it pleases ; 
trusting his mind just as his body is trusted to 



BODY AND MIND. 67 

digest and retain what is nourishing, and to 
retain such facts so long only as the mind has 
use for them. 

As the body needs^to be kept vigorous by 
food and exercise, so should the mind be 
renewed and kept vigorous by study and men- 
tal activity. Provisions for systematic study 
should be as carefully provided, and as regu- 
larly taken, as the materials for the daily 
meals of the physical body. No human being 
is exempt from the need of the one sort of 
provision any more than of the other, nor at 
any age. 

As the development and subsequent care of 
both bodies is meaningless unless the soul 
grows thereby, it is desirable to try to get a 
clear idea of the soul's relations to these phys- 
ical and non-physical activities. 

The will of a man is to his soul what the 
heart is to the physical body. Whatever 
weakens and exhausts the will of a man tends 
to the destruction of his soul ; and through 
such indulgences as weaken the will, a man 
often loses in one incarnation what he has 
gained in another. If this weakening or 
exhausting of the will force goes on through 
successive incarnations, the soul may go to 
pieces altogether, becoming extinct through 



68 SOULS. 

failure of will power. Herein is one meaning 
of suffering, — the power which it has to stim- 
ulate and discipline the will. When one per- 
son takes from another the legitimate labors 
and responsibilities to which that other was 
born, or has brought upon himself, he does 
that other irreparable harm ; and if he forces 
upon another such labors and responsibilities 
as legitimately belong to himself, he does his 
own soul that harm. 

A soul knows and remembers its past. As 
a man may possess a large circle of cultivated 
land but live on the extreme limit of its cir- 
cumference, and there content himself without 
ever going either around his land or across it ; 
so a soul may become so absorbed in its pres- 
ent personality as to pass an incarnation with- 
out taking any note of its past attainments. 
Also, it may plant and nourish in that new 
field what already grows luxuriantly in some 
other ; and knowledge which it craves and can 
not obtain in its age or environment may be 
stored away in its own interior. 

The sudden waking up of a man to the com- 
prehension of some new body of knowledge is 
often but the penetration of consciousness to 
some interior soul memory ; and the exterior 
contact with that body of knowledge has been 



BODY AND MIND. 69 

the stimulus which has awakened that mem- 
ory. The thread of that soul memory may, if 
followed, lead the man to much more than any 
of his generation have yet gained in that line ; 
and applying that gain to the affairs or con- 
ditions of the age in which he lives, he may 
be able to carry that line of knowledge a little 
farther than it has ever been carried in any 
previous age. Unless rediscoveries are so car- 
ried forward to new acquisitions they are, 
however useful to the generation which redis- 
covers them, no actual gain to humanity as a 
whole, nor to the soul who contents itself with 
rediscovery. 

In the activities of these soul memories, 
largely lies the power of quick or slow appre- 
ciation of new truths or new reforms. A man 
who is slow to grasp a new idea is either shut 
from his own soul's past, or never before, in 
any incarnation, has his soul come in contact 
with that idea. In the former case, a man's 
waking up to the new idea is apt to be sudden; 
in the latter, a slow and laborious process. No 
man or generation of men creates a new body 
of knowledge ; to increase a little what souls 
bring with them from past incarnations is all 
that any age accomplishes. 

As every soul brings to each incarnation all 



70 SOULS. 

of its past, one object of education should be 
the unlocking of those possessions to con- 
sciousness ; and for this purpose, the wider the 
variety of studies and experiences, the more 
complete the unlocking may be. Espec- 
ially, should a child be tried with one subject 
after another until one is found which he takes 
to with avidity, and remembers the details of 
without effort. This study or occupation 
should be made the center around which his 
others revolve until he is ready to attempt new 
fields ; and these he should have full opportu- 
nities to attempt at any step, and urging if 
need be to make him begin the attempt. 

That a youth takes easily to any given line 
of study or occupation may be the strongest 
reason why he should not follow that line 
through life. Success, ease, competence, — 
these are of no value to the soul, and no test 
of a soul's greatness. Let a man try to do what 
is difficult, and keep at it through any amount 
of disappointment ; and whether he finally 
succeed before men or not, to his soul his life 
will not have been thrown away, as it may be 
if he follow the line of least resistance. 

Opportunity is given to the soul and for the 
soul ; and to hand that opportunity over to 
the exclusive use of its bodies — physical body 



BODY AND MIND. 7 1 

and mind — is as great a proof of soul insanity 
as it would be of mental insanity, for a man to 
spend all of his opportunity on changes of 
raiment for the physical body, without provid- 
ing for it food or any other necessity. 

As the more sensitive and responsive to all 
stimulus the body and mind are the more 
advantage to the soul ; so repression of thought 
and emotion are as baleful as repression of 
physical activity. Self control may produce 
callousness, and independence of thought atro- 
phy. Much that passes for self control is lack 
of soul, that is of sensitiveness on a high plane ; 
and much that passes for independence is the 
obstinate resistance of the personality of a man 
to the monitions of his soul. 

If, in a man's education, thirty years could 
be given to the physical body — the first twenty 
to growth and the other ten to training — ; if 
another thirty to the mind — from ten to thirty 
to growth, and from thirty to forty to train- 
ing — ; and another thirty to the soul — from 
twenty to forty to unlocking its past, and 
from forty to fifty to the application of that 
past to the knowledges and affairs of the pres- 
ent generation, — a man at fifty would be ready 
to enter into public life with some assurance of 
being valuable to his own soul and to other men. 



72 SOULS. 

At fifty, a man should have fifty years of 
active life left ; and he would have if his life 
were simple and natural from the beginning. 
Trained in the manner indicated above, a man 
at fifty might select that field of activity which 
promises to give his mind and body as great a 
strain as they can bear ; and there concentrate 
his powers until, in that field, his soul can get 
no more power, and no new growth in quali- 
ties. When that field is exhausted, he might 
try another and another, until body and mind 
fail in vigor, and the soul desires rest. 

When that time comes, the man should obey 
the call of his soul to cease work and get ready 
to depart. The getting ready is important. 
His public labors and responsibilities, and his 
private cares should be transferred to others. 
Then, he should concentrate the time and 
strength remaining to him on an effort to with- 
draw thought and feeling from all phases of 
material life, and to focus them on the im- 
material. By such effort, he might withdraw 
the vitality from both of his bodies ; so 
that the death of the physical body would 
be soon followed by the death of the non- 
physical ; and neither his soul nor that of 
any other man suffer by his detention in 
the first zone of the non-physical realm of 



BODY AND MIND. 73 

earth. Passing to the third zone, such a 
soul would be ready at once to enter upon 
that sleep and rest which are necessary to 
begin with advantage a new incarnation. 

As to spend a day with special reference to 
a night, and to direct all of its activities to a 
preparation for sleep is unnecessary to a man 
in fair health ; so is it unnecessary to spend an 
incarnation in preparation for the third zone, 
or in dread of the caverns. The hope of 
reward and the fear of punishment are as per- 
nicious to the healthy growth of a man's soul 
as they are ignoble and unsafe motives for the 
regulation of his conduct in dealing with his 
fellow men. And as to keep waking up loved 
ones to ask them questions about their dreams, 
to be assured of their continued love, or to try 
to get advice from them as to one's own affairs 
or conduct, would be hurtful to them ; so is it 
hurtful to the physically dead to try to com- 
municate with them. 

How far the education of youth, and the 
subsequent lives of men differ from what is 
suggested above, most men can judge ; but he 
only who has penetrated the non-physical and 
soul realms can know the extent and quality 
of the results which are produced by the pres- 
ent modes of educating and living. 



74 SOULS. 

All forms of physical filth have their non- 
physical representatives. Unclean and gross 
foods, and filthy physical appetites of all sorts 
make conditions on the lower surface of the 
first zone of the non-physical, which may be 
compared to the mud and slime which gather 
in stagnant ponds. Every city is, non-physi- 
cally, such a pond ; and no dweller in a city, 
however clean and wholesome his own physi- 
cal life, can escape contact with this non-physi- 
cal mud and slime. The amount of this non- 
physical filth which a person produces is in 
inverse ratio to the purity, simplicity and 
temperance with which he satisfies his own 
physical appetites. In a similar manner, the 
thoughts of men affect the non-physical realm ; 
but the effects from them are less ponderable 
and form clouds which float in the first zone 
as physical clouds do in the atmosphere. 

These clouds — their formation, condensa- 
tion, precipitation, and dispersion — offer a 
study as painful as it is curious and interesting. 
The greater the power of thought and action 
which a man has, and the wider the field of his 
activities, the larger the clouds which he pro- 
duces, and the farther they spread. Some of 
these clouds are as lovely in form and color, 
and as cleansing and refreshing when precipi- 



BODY AND MIND, 75 

tated as are the physical clouds which float 
in June skies. The first non-physical zone 
of this planet has, at present, few of that sort. 
Most of the clouds are dark and murky, and 
precipitate sleet, and hail which is hard and 
cuts like steel, and acid rain which eats away 
the lives of men. As the physical body 
Walks through mud, is drenched by rain, buf- 
fetted by winds, and chapped and cut by cold 
and sleet : so the precipitations of non-physi- 
cal clouds fall upon the non-physical bodies of 
men ; and no living man, woman, or child on 
the surface of the physical earth or on the 
floor of the first zone of the non-physical earth 
can escape them. As physical clouds are 
formed over oceans, carried by winds over the 
earth, and beat in fierce storms against such 
mountain ranges as oppose their progress ; so 
the present dark non-physical clouds are 
formed over cities, distributed over the earth, 
and strive with greatest fierceness to overcome 
the few currents and clouds which the good in 
thought produce. 

The activities of minds produce vapors, 
gases, and smoke in the non-physical realm ; 
but those of souls produce the heat and cold, 
light and darkness of that realm. The heat 
which some souls send forth is enervating and 



76 SOULS. y 

destructive, while that of others is as refresh- 
ing and vitalizing as the spring sunlight. 

There are few souls on earth to-day in phys- 
ical bodies who shine. In regions where men 
congregate in appreciable numbers, the dark- 
ness is so great that one who sees by the non- 
physical sight alone must grope his way 
about. A few souls shine in this darkness as 
stars in the depths of night. Many a soul 
who is capable of shining is, to-day, covering 
and hiding its light ; and the longer a soul light 
is hidden, the smaller it grows. Going from 
city to city in the non-physical realm of earth, 
the darkness became painfully oppressive. 
There were so few souls shining that they 
made scarely any impression ; but if each hid- 
den light were uncovered, the darkness would 
be less and life become easier to all men. The 
power of any soul to shine depends upon the 
amount of ray it has conscious possession of. 

The power of a clean, sincere soul to do 
good by its presence is great. In an obscure 
street in Philadelphia is a poor woman, who 
toils for her daily bread, whose soul is so radi- 
ant that its light extends beyond her physical 
body and makes a large ellipsoid about that 
body, narrowest at her feet, widest about her 
head. A few years ago, there walked the 



BODY AND MIND. 7 7 

streets of Boston a clergyman whose soul 
shone in the same way. When that soul bade 
farewell to its friends in the flesh, it left at 
once both of its bodies ; and, without so much 
delay as to know that there is a non-physical 
body or a first zone in the non-physical earth, 
this soul, while asleep, was carried to the third 
zone in the arms of those who loved it. 

The physical world is the world of illusions; 
the non-physical is the world of realities in 
matter. In the physical, forms are fixed ac- 
cording to certain types, and the variations in 
those types are slight in comparison to the 
variations in the non-physical. In the first 
zone of the non-physical earth, objects are 
mobile and responsive to thought. In that 
zone, thought and combinations of thought 
take such forms as are the inevitable expression 
of the thought. 

When a man at physical death emerges into 
the non-physical realm, he may, for a short 
time, preserve in his non-physical body the 
shape of the physical which he has left, be- 
cause he thinks of himself as having that 
form ; but, try as hard as he may, that non- 
physical body soon takes on the form and 
conditions which express the dominant quali- 
ties of his thought during life in the physical 



78 SOULS. 

body. A few instances will illustrate what 
actually occurs. 

A man six feet tall and fairly proportioned, 
who during life in the physical body claimed 
the friendship of a few of the world-famed 
great, when seen a few months after death had 
a tall frame. About a year later, he had arms 
and legs shrunken to about the size of a dog's 
legs ; and the body, shrunken but still 
large, was carried on all fours ; and the 
head had become of the shape one might 
imagine a cross between a dog and an 
alligator to produce ; and the huge jaws 
were stretched in vain to make a sound of 
any sort. The soul of the man was encased in 
this hideous non-physical body, and readily 
recognized the writer. Two years later, this 
soul was seen near the fifth descent in the 
caverns ; and the non-physical body which it 
had lately left was roaming about the first 
zone, a huge, lean, hungry alligator-dog, which 
preyed like a vampire on the vitality of any 
man to whom it could get access. 

Another, a woman of wealth, social position, 
and much pride, about three months after 
death, was seen in a dreary place, carrying 
a wrinkled, shriveled body of the size of 
a child two years old. She was accom- 



BODY AND MIND. 79 

panied by a daughter whose form had changed 
but slightly, and who looked at her mother 
sorrowfully ; and by a cousin who had the 
form of a small, ugly cat with ragged fur. 
These three non-physical bodies contained the 
souls of their owners. 

A child of fourteen, who had been much in- 
dulged by her mother, had a badly misshapen 
body and the face of an idiot. A year later, 
the author saw the soul of this girl soon after 
it had escaped from that non-physical body and 
entered the third zone. The soul was sym : 
metrical, lovely, clean ; and the mother was 
largely responsible for the encasing of that 
soul in such a deformed non-physical body, and 
entailing on it the misery of remaining in the 
first zone almost three years before it could get 
rid of that body and rise to the third zone. 

The disillusions which await men at physi- 
cal death seem to the author utterly beyond 
the power of belief or of the imaginations of 
men while still alive in physical bodies. Not 
all are so grossly deformed, but many are 
worse r and few entirely escape. On the other 
hand, a very few have more beautiful and sym- 
metrical non-physical bodies than physical; and 
this may be true as a whole when some member 
of the body is deformed or even wanting. 



80 SOULS. 

Souls too are deformed. Life in the third 
zone is like a pleasant dream compared to our 
physical life, but no perfection is there. Souls 
are stunted, misshapen, deformed, blind, and 
deaf who still have been capable of rising to the 
third zone; and the forms of souls in the caverns 
may be left to the imagination of the reader. 

As there is no perfection of form in the 
third zone, so is there none of knowledge or 
emotion. A soul knows what it has gathered 
in its incarnations, and very little or nothing 
more; and since its business in the third zone 
is to sleep, it is rarely conscious of anything 
beyond its last incarnation. The time between 
incarnations, however long it be, is spent, 
either in sleep and recreation, or in such activ- 
ities as purify; and not in new growth in any 
direction. 

The mind and physical body of man are his 
channels of soul growth; and the soul has no 
power to seek other channels, or these chan- 
nels on other planets, or any channels beyond 
our earth until he has exhausted the capacities 
of those provided here. Hence, the soul is 
sent to school in one sort of body and envi- 
ronment in one incarnation, and in another sort 
in another incarnation; and all sorts are of 
equal value to any soul who sets itself 



BOD Y AND MIND. 8 1 

patiently and honestly to learning the lessons 
that sort has to teach. To look enviously or 
disdainfully at his fellow man is to imagine 
that he himself ought to have or that his fel- 
low man does not deserve the same kind of 
lessons which he has himself. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE VIRTUES OF SOULS. 



The weaknesses of men have produced most 
of the conditions against which they chafe. 
Apart from human governments, the checks on 
the wills of men are few and slight. These 
checks aside, each may do whatever he 
has the energy and capacity to do; and the 
quantity and quality of the energy and capacity 
which any one possesses are the result of the 
use his soul has made of its own past. 

Each man is a part of the whole body of 
men on earth; and it is the collective wills of 
the whole which have made the environments 
in which each lives to-day. Each soul, in its 
past incarnations, has had a share in making 
these environments what they are to-day; and 
each soul, to-day, is helping to make the envir- 
onments in which itself and other souls will be 
born in subsequent incarnations. When a 
man sinks in weakness of will or despair under 
his present environment, let him remember 
that the difficulties which he has failed to 

overcome are what he himself probably made 
82 



VIRTUES. 83 

strong efforts to force on men when, in a 
former incarnation, he was at the top. When 
a man glories in his strength to-dav, and des- 
pises the weaknesses of other men, let him ask 
himself if there is an environment on earth 
which would crush his will or destroy his vir- 
tue. 

The physical and non-physical portions of 
our planet act and react on each other, and 
whatever exists in the non-physical realm ulti- 
mately finds expression on the physical plane. 
This is true of soul also. Every soul receives 
from and is modified by both of its bodies; and 
also does every soul affect both of its bodies. 
Many of the physical and mental defects and 
deformities, and some of the diseases of men 
are the exterior expression of defects in their 
souls. 

As each soul individually affects and modi- 
fies its own bodies, so does soul collectively 
affect and modify the non-physical and phys- 
ical conditions of the planet, even to electric 
and climatic changes. The changes in nature 
which depend upon men are necessarily slow 
because they are made by man as a whole; 
and each man helps or hinders any given 
change in exact proportion to the strength of 
his soul and the purity of his motives. Every 



84 SOULS. 

good man lifts and helps all conditions in 
nature and all phases of life which are below 
him, and every evil man repels and hinders 
them. 

What is true of the physical environments 
and conditions which a man can see is true 
also of the non-physical environments and 
conditions which a man cannot cognize with 
his physical senses. Each soul is, to-day, mak- 
ing a personality the vitality of which it may 
quickly absorb and carry with itself to the 
third zone or to the caverns; or a personality 
that will exist in the first zone to the deten- 
tion and hurt of itself and to the harm of other 
souls. 

Men and women physically alive to-day are 
not beset nor victimized by the evil personali- 
ties in the first zone, nor by the lost souls from 
the caverns, save by their own permission. 
As a man's inclinations lead him to good or 
evil influences in the physical realm, so do his 
thoughts draw to him good or evil influences 
from the non-physical realm. To a foul soul 
the presence of purity is as irritating as foul- 
ness is to the clean: but none are wholly 
clean ; there are all grades of foulness ; and 
each does what it can to sap the strength and 
foul the purity of every man, woman, and 



VIRTUES. 85 

child to whom it can get access. The things 
which men do which seem slight in their eyes 
are often the opening of the door to these sap- 
pers ; and the door, if not shut, is sure to grow 
wider, and sappers of worse degree to take the 
places of the earlier ones. In allowing a child 
evil associates, he is put in» danger of worse 
influences than his physical companions exert ; 
because the non-physical companions whom 
he may pick up, and through his thoughts 
allow to follow him, may enter the recesses of 
his own home, particularly if that home be not 
over strong in good influences. 

As men have made and are making their 
environments, so they have made and are 
making their joys and sorrows. Two-thirds 
of all the babies that are born in civilized 
lands to-day have no souls attached to them. 
These babies are emanations from their par- 
ents, not true entities ; and, unless a soul at- 
taches itself, no ordinary efforts can carry one 
of them to the twentieth year. [See Appen- 
dix V.] Souls do attach themselves to 
babies after birth, sometimes so late as the 
third year. On the other hand, babies who 
have souls at birth, sometimes lose them be- 
cause the soul finds a better place or is drawn 
away by a stronger influence ; but such leav- 



86 SOULS. 

ing rarely occurs after the third year. Souls 
who attach themselves late and who leave a 
baby after birth are usually old, conscious 
souls who are trying to get the best opportun- 
ities for their own special needs. 

Souls in the stage of purification who re- 
member neglect or worse crimes toward their 
children in former incarnations have strong 
desire to give birth to the same souls again, 
in order to atone by the greatest possible care 
for them under the n§w conditions. If pos- 
sible, this desire is gratified. Such babies are 
usually greatly loved, the soul of the father or 
mother knowing the soul of the child, al- 
though unable to impress that knowledge on 
the personality. But the soul of the child has 
its own needs, and tarries so long only as is 
necessary to satisfy the parent soul's desire to 
pay the debt. The death of these babies 
usually causes great grief to one or both par- 
ents ; for, although the debt is amply paid by 
the motive in the parent's soul and by the effort 
made, it is hard for the parent soul to accept 
the fact, and still harder for the personality to 
give up the hopes which had centered in the 
child. The soul who comes in this manner, 
turning aside from its own path, or breaking 
its rest in the third zone to satisfy the parent's 



VIRTUES. 87 

desire, is more than recompensed by the love 
which it receives, and which follows it after it 
has withdrawn from the short incarnation ; for 
a sincere love is the most powerful aid one soul 
can receive from another. 

Souls who have finished their education on 
this planet ; and have, among the souls who are 
obliged to incarnate, no friends who need them, 
sometimes incarnate with the hope of helping 
men at large. The soul of William of Orange 
has recently returned in this manner, and is 
now in the body of a boy, four years old, in 
the State of Connecticut. Other such souls 
will come as soon as they/can find favorable 
places of birth. The impure habits of men, 
their diseased bodies, and the small likelihood 
of such life and training through childhood as 
will insure a strong physique are the barriers 
which keep these great souls waiting in the 
third zone. 

Souls who do not need to incarnate may 
come when they please and go when they 
choose to go ; but all others have the length 
of their stay defined within certain limits, and 
no influence within a man or without him can 
extend that limit. No man or woman need 
grieve or feel remorse for the time of another's 
death ; but every man and woman should feel 



88 SOULS. 

remorse and shame at the manner of death 
which the present habits of living force upon 
all men. The deaths of children and youths 
should be as painless as the withering of 
flowers on their stalks ; and all death, in young 
and old, should be gradual, free from suffer- 
ing, and free from all that is loathsome. And 
such death will be when men have risen above 
being cannibals in their food, and lovers of 
night in their pleasures ; ceased to breathe the 
hot, foul air of dwellings ; and have decided to 
entertain the notions that activity is better 
than idleness, and that activity which minis- 
ters to mind and soul is more noble than activ- 
ity which ministers t6 the physical body. 
When all are sufficiently active to insure 
health, none will be overworked ; when the 
mind is rated above physical luxury, there will 
be room in commercial circles for every 
man to earn all he needs for the sustenance of 
himself and his family ; when soul is recog- 
nized as possessing nothing but what it can 
carry from one incarnation to another, men will 
cease to care to pile up great properties and put 
their powers to nobler uses ; when souls get 
old enough so that each, whatever the present 
sex of its physical body, appreciates the honor 
and dignity of personal, independent support, 



VIRTUES. 89 

and not only sustains itself but earns the right 
to share in great public enterprises, then will 
souls begin to uplift and to advance, and not 
to abase and to hinder one another. 

All of this is afar off : what each man and 
woman needs to-day is not to dream of Uto- 
pias, not to be concerned about the saving of a 
soul, but to get possession of a soul who is worth 
the saving. 

The first need of every soul is strength — 
soul strength. Most souls to-day are giving 
up what strength they possess to their person- 
alities — physical body and mind — and souls 
pass from the personalities of to-day, weaker, 
and not stronger, for all the wear and tear of 
this nineteenth -century life. 

Soul -strength comes from the free exercise 
of one's own will, and not from the following 
of the will of some other soul. When a soul 
allows another to dominate its life in private or 
public, and to decide its conduct, it gives up 
its own will and begins the process of soul -sui- 
cide. When a soul looks to its neighbor or to 
a member of its own family for a standard of 
conduct, it is more liable to seize upon a meas- 
ure set by some child of a dozen incarnations 
than one set by some old soul wise through 
the experiences of hundreds of incarnations ; for 



go souls. 

at present these old souls are a minority. To 
measure one's self by a child, hundreds of 
incarnations behind one, is certainly folly which 
degrades the soul: on the other hand, to set 
an old soul, hundreds of incarnations ahead, as 
one's model may bring failure, despair, and a 
waste of the possibilities of what one's self 
can do honorably and well. Yet to look at 
an old soul and desire to emulate it, at least 
in moral excellence, is one of the noblest in- 
centives a soul can have. 

Not in conduct alone, but in thought should 
the freewill be exercised. Men carry about 
ready-made opinions as jauntily as ready-made 
fashions ; and the former are often as senseless 
and silly as the latter. It is the sophistries of 
life, and the unthinking manner in which they 
are accepted, which hurt souls. While old 
souls are a minority, a goodly number are in 
their prime, and many are just entering man- 
hood. It is time that these roused themselves ; 
shook off the slumber of idleness, dreams and 
sophistries ; and began to show what stuff they 
are made of. 

As soul -strength comes by the free exercise 
of the will, the more exercise the better. 
Desire is passive; it has not and cannot do 
anything for a soul but to deceive it into the 



VIRTUES. 91 

notion that intention can take the place of 
action. No intention, no emotion, no move- 
ment of feeling or desire of any sort has one 
feather's weight in the balance in which souls 
are weighed. By action does the soul grow, 
by action is gained the strength which holds it 
together. 

Let each soul do its own work, in its own 
way, and refrain from other work ; although all 
the world should clamor and call hard names. 
The souls which a man elbows to-day in his 
own family or in his social circle are few, and 
he may never again come in contact with 
them. While he should treat them all cour- 
teously, why should he care for their good or 
ill opinion to the extent of turning out of his 
path or lowering his standard of conduct ? 
Every soul may be sure that its real friends — 
the friends of the soul — will come to it, either 
in this or in another incarnation : for loves 
which are of the soul perpetuate themselves 
past a thousand incarnations ; and fortunate 
above common men and women are those 
whose souls are sensitive to these loves, and 
faithful to them across any barriers of society, 
and in their own family circles. 

To do, to do with the whole might, is the 
need of men to-day; but the average man and 



92 SOULS. 

woman seems incapable of desire to do, and in 
doing anything to do it perfectly, and to be 
moved by aversion to labor and insensibility to 
slovenliness. The first step to a soul's nobility 
is to seek willingly a hard place where strength 
is necessary, and to shun rewards which have 
not been won by honest toil. Idleness and 
half -doing are ulcers which eat away a soul, 
weaken the will, and lead to soul - suicide ; but 
doing which begins and ends in the care of the 
physical body is poor doing, however vigor- 
ously pursued ; and when men begin to recog- 
nize this no man, woman, or child will do or be 
obliged to do more of this sort of labor than 
is needful to wholesome, beautiful living. 

Next to J:he free exercise of the will in 
worthy activities, sincerity is of most value to 
a soul. The grossest forms of insincerity are 
practiced in the names of love and religion. In 
one city in our land, is a soul whose fame in 
the physical world is rivaled in extent by a 
black cloud in the non- physical world, which 
cloud is the effect of the pursuit of power and 
praise in the name of love to mankind. In 
another, is a soul who is black with the indulg- 
ence of greed — the greed of reward in heaven. 
Thousands call this person blessed for piety 
and deeds of kindness but of those deeds of 



VIRTUES. 93 

kindness the number is kept in memory, and 
counted and re-counted with a gloating which 
is paralleled only in the miser's counting the 
coins in his money-bags, and every one is 
thought to lay up store in heaven. Both of 
these persons started out with desire to do 
good ; but, rinding the associations offensive, 
both continued at the work of charity- — the 
one for love of praise and power, the other for 
greed of heavenly reward. 

Better let the hungry starve, the naked 
freeze, the invalid suffer, and the child grow 
up in ignorance and filth than to give food, 
clothing, care, training, or a single dollar in 
money with an unloving hand. Suffering, 
ignorance, filth, and death are small matters 
compared to the degradation of love and truth 
in each insincere gift. In proportion to the 
value of a quality, is the harm wrought by the 
hypocrisy which simulates it. 

To exercise the will, to be active, to be sin- 
cere, — these are the first three needs of men ; 
and the fourth is obedience. 

The voice which speaks in each personality 
is the voice of its own soul; and that voice 
should be obeyed. That voice is far from being 
infallible ; but it i^ to the average man a better 
guide than any voice outside of himself. 



94 SOULS. 

Moreover, by seeking that voice and following 
it, a man gets acquainted with his own soul and 
its needs ; and the sooner any man knows the 
faults, weaknesses, and limitations of his own 
soul, the sooner he may set about doing him- 
self, some permanent good. 

Every soul in the upward current receives 
influence from its ray; but, until a soul becomes 
very sensitive to the presence of its ray, that 
influence is felt rather than heard. When a 
man has a vague, undefined feeling that his 
conduct or something which he proposes to do 
or not to do is wrong, he should pause. If 
that feeling remain, he should obey it, whether 
his reason sanction the obedience or not ; for 
although there are other influences about men, 
they are not likely to urge an excess of virtue. 

Men know not what they do when they neg- 
lect or allow worldly or selfish scruples to over- 
ride an inward urging to some act. In the 
second century of our era, a physician in Rome 
committed a deliberate, premeditated crime 
against his daughter, who was a priestess in one 
of the pagan temples. The day following the 
crime, the priestess threw herself into the Tiber. 
In the seventeen hundred years since, although 
the souls of both father and daughter have had 
several incarnations, they have met but once, 



VIRTUES. 95 

and that recently. At this meeting, the soul of 
the father was that of an old man who had 
considerable property, the soul of the daughter 
that of a young woman struggling under the 
double burden of disease and a large family to 
support. The old man was strongly moved to 
help the woman, and went so far as to suggest 
giving her ten thousand dollars. That sum 
would have been riches to her, and have made 
her life easy and safe ; but he died without hav- 
ing given her a dollar. To-day, the soul of that 
old man is in the third zone and blind ; and blind 
that soul has been since the day of that far-off 
crime. 

When a soul is moved to do a deed of kind- 
ness or sacrifice, even to the risk of life, for 
another soul, let it hasten to do it ; for these 
precious opportunities are few and far apart. 

Does any soul wish not to receive from one 
who has wronged it ? By that wish it would 
deny the possibility of repairing its own wrongs 
to others. Does the reader ask why men are 
left in so much doubt about these matters ? 
Full memories and consciousness of past in- 
carnations would make life intolerable and this 
debt -paying impossible. 

Near the Atlantic coast, the soul of Charlotte 
Corday lives to-day in a woman's body. For 



96 SOULS. 

twelve years that woman has served another 
woman, and served willingly, for there has 
been much love between the two women; and 
the woman whom she has served is a reincarna- 
tion of the soul of Marat. Of the two women, 
the soul of Marat is the stronger ; but the soul 
of Charlotte Corday is the cleaner, and the 
more sensitive to the influence of its ray. But 
the debt to Marat's soul is paid, and the soul 
of Charlotte Corday should withdraw from the 
influence of the stronger soul and think its own 
thoughts. As for the soul of Marat, it has been 
in its present incarnation almost as much be- 
loved as in the preceding it was execrated ; but 
neither the love, nor the execration have been 
wholly deserved. The soul of Marat loves 
power, and is insensible to the cruelties which 
it perpetrates in the pursuit and exercise of 
power. This insensibility has loaded it with 
heavy debts; but when it wakes up to the fact, 
the strength it has gathered may enable it to 
endure the terrible strain of paying them all. 
It behooves each man and woman to stop and 
ask, Who am I? What am I doing? Why 
do I do it? These questions asked sincerely 
of the ray will bring some sort of answer — 
sufficient to guide the soul to commit no more 
gross blunders. 



VIRTUES. 97 

Much that men call evil is superficial, dies 
with the personality, and does not affect the 
soul; and small matters such as personal van- 
ities and peculiarities, and the common small 
relations with other men need not give a soul 
much concern. In relations to other souls, 
such matters as affect the progress of a soul, 
especially its opportunities to develop and to 
take care of itself, are of most importance. 

Great and strong qualities belong to souls, 
petty and weak ones which are attached to 
old souls belong to personalities mainly ; 
and in the writing of biography and history 
it would be well to remember this. Such qual- 
ities as enabled a soul to make its mark on 
history should be remembered for the emula- 
tion or avoidance of men, and all else pass 
into oblivion. The belittling of great charac- 
ters by details of the offensive peculiarities of 
their personalities does but destroy the effect 
of the strong points, and allows the flippant 
reader to excuse his own pettiness and to scorn 
a character which he can neither understand nor 
emulate. Old and great souls are lonely, 
necessarily so, and yet they are more sensitive 
than other men to every human relation. 
This loneliness, and the craving which it en- 
genders, together with the sensitiveness often 
7 



98 SOULS. 

leads to reckless follies or to such bursts of 
irritation as half developed souls can not com- 
prehend. This is not meant to excuse either 
the folly or the irritation ; and none know bet- 
ter than these souls themselves, in their sane 
moments, how degrading both are. Next to 
a sincere love, the greatest good one soul can 
render another is a sincere forgetting of that 
other's weaknesses, by dwelling upon and help- 
ing to increase his strength, until he is strong 
enough to throw off the weakness altogether. 

To be strong-willed, active, sincere and 
obedient ; to avoid weakness, idleness, shams 
and indifference, — these are the first needs of 
all souls, for on these depend the permanent 
existence or the destruction of all souls. As 
man desires something more than existence 
in his body and mind, is unsatisfied without 
stature, beauty and the like ; so he should desire 
something more than existence as soul. 

The powers which confer most stature and 
beauty on souls are understanding and love ; 
and of these understanding is the greater. 
Understanding is not knowledge, but it is 
gained through the pursuit of knowledge. 
To pursue knowledge is not to pursue learning, 
as men commonly use that term, learning. 
No man can have too much learning ; all kinds 



VIRTUES. 99 

of learning are valuable to the soul ; and the 
higher kinds are so valuable that no soul can 
afford to let slip any fair and honorable oppor- 
tunities to get them. 

Knowledge comes by experience ; but ex- 
perience often fails to teach a man anything 
because his mind is not stored with the learn- 
ing which would enable him to interpret the 
experience, and make the best use of it in get- 
ting more experience. Learning is the re- 
corded experiences of man's past to which each 
soul has contributed something, and each soul 
should take delight in fostering and increasing 
these records ; but the recorded experience of 
one man is not knowledge to another until 
his own experience in the same line has en- 
abled him to comprehend it. An intellectual 
perception or assent is not comprehension ; 
and a man may be learned and yet possess 
little knowledge. A love of learning is not a 
love of knowledge ; and the way in which some 
men pursue learning but keeps them from 
getting any knowledge at all. 

Knowledge, rightly used, leads to under- 
standing, which is the power of intuitively 
perceiving, discriminating, and penetrating to 
the real core or substance of any matter. 
Understanding never has, and never can come 



ioo SOULS. ■ 

to any soul save through its own efforts. The 
originality which any soul shows is the meas- 
ure of its understanding ; and all originality 
is the result of knowledge gained through ex- 
perience in past incarnations. 

The personalities of men often obscure the 
understanding of their souls in such a manner 
as to make the soul utterly helpless and use- 
less to, itself and to other souls. The person- 
alities of to-day most frequently blind the under- 
standing of their souls by what they call love. 

There are thousands incarnate on earth to- 
day who would willingly exchange all the love 
they receive for the better boon of being un- 
derstood. If the members of families would 
put aside the glamor which they call love and 
look at one another with sincere effort to get 
acquainted with one another's souls, they 
would soon discover the real reasons for their 
being together ; and then they could adjust 
their relations to the greatest help each could 
give the others with some surety of not blun- 
dering. This effort to get acquainted with 
the souls of other men, through each one's re- 
moving the bandage over the understanding 
of his own soul, would lead to some interesting 
revelations in regard to the relations of men in 
domestic, social, commercial, and political life. 



VIRTUES. ioi 

Understanding leads to truth. Truth is the 
center and circumference of all things ; and by 
means of it all things in nature and in man 
exist. As to deal truly in conduct and speech 
is the highest compliment a man can pay to 
his friend; so is integrity, or dealing truly with 
one's own soul, the highest homage a soul can 
give to its ray. A truthful word or deed is 
the noblest prayer any man, woman, or child 
can utter. 

The integrity of a man is the measure of the 
stature of his soul — of its stature and freedom 
from deformities. Sincerity is not integrity ; 
for a man may be sincere in wrong conduct, 
and in holding false ideas. Integrity is devo- 
tion, in thought and conduct, to truth which has 
been reached through such understanding as 
is the outgrowth of knowledge which has been 
gained by experience. It is the obedience of 
a man to the highest monitions of his soul ; 
and it is usually the last achievement of a soul 
in its earthly career. It is wisdom. 

As truth gives stature and perfection, so 
love gives grace and beauty to a soul. The 
word love is, to-day, made to cover so much 
that it fails to convey the meaning here in- 
tended. There are few people who have much 
integrity ; and fewer still who have much love, 



102 SOULS. 

even for themselves. The chief characteristic 
of love is desire to help — to help one's self 
and to help others. Not to lean, but to stand 
upright ; not to be served, but to serve ; not to 
hoard, but to give ; not to enslave, but to leave 
free; not to contract, but to expand; not to 
diminish, but to increase ; not to enjoy, but to 
make enjoyment for another, — these are the 
deeds of love ; and every soul who loves 
reaches out in deeds like these to all living 
things. The amount of such doing which any 
soul does is. a measure of the love which it 
possesses — a measure of its own grace and 
beauty. 

Love unregulated by understanding wastes 
itself foolishly, and does harm to other men. 
Every soul's environment, and the responsibil- 
ities and limitations to whicji a soul is born 
are its means of development and purification ; 
and when the loving soul takes these away and 
bears the burdens which another soul ought to 
bear, it does harm and not good. Beyond the 
faithful discharge of honorable obligations, the 
greatest service one soul can render another is 
to get out of its way, or to make for it an 
opportunity to serve itself. 

Add love and truth to those qualities which 
are necessary to the existence of a soul, and 



VIRTUES. 103 

the soul is complete, so far as life on this 
planet can complete it. All other qualities of 
the souls and of the personalities of men are 
but phases of the craving to enjoy. The crav- 
ing for possessions, for power, for fame, for 
religious emotion, for beauty in person or sur- 
roundings — every craving which centers in 
self and feeds the flame of vanity, even to 
the craving for what is called human rights, 
are but phases of that craving to enjoy. To 
crave to help another, to crave to know the 
truth — to have and to follow these cravings, 
regardless of the consequences of such fol- 
lowing to one's own mental or material enjoy- 
ments — is to begin to be a grown-up soul. 

Outside of human thought, there is neither 
right nor wrong, reward nor punishment, jus- 
tice nor injustice. There are cause and effect 
only, and the two are inseparable. Each soul 
creates causes in each incarnation, and each 
cause brings its effect. No man can change 
an effect by a hair's breadth, and no soul can 
lay on any other soul a single iota of an effect 
of one of itspwn causes. Each soul influences 
all other souls whom it meets and passes, and 
the soul who makes these influences receives 
the ultimate effects of them. 

As souls are neither rewarded nor punished, 



r* 



104 SOULS. 

they may cease to propitiate or fear. The idea 
of propitiation is a drugged cup which debases 
every soul who drinks it, and fear is a cloak 
which shrivels every soul who wraps itself in 
its folds. 

To an old soul, fully conscious, the idea that 
any other soul can receive the effects of its 
own causes is unthinkable : but if it were 
thinkable, such a soul would desire not to avail 
itself of it ; and would pray to be punished as 
hard as men now pray not to be punished : 
but there is no punishment ; there is, only, 
receiving the effects of one's own causes. Not 
to be saved from the consequences of sin, but 
to be saved from sin, is what men should seek — 
saved from creating any more evil causes to 
return their evil effects at some future time. 

Sometimes the cause and effect are ages 
apart, but they do not fail to meet and to ex- 
actly coincide. When a soul reaches a reali- 
zation of this great fact, it will no longer desire 
ease, nor power, nor fame, nor any other thing 
which men deem so good. It will desire to 
receive, as rapidly as it can endure them, the 
effects of all the weak and vicious causes which 
it: has set going ; and to pay its debts in full, in 
order that, as far as possible, the earth and it- 
self may be rid of the blemishes it has made. 



VIRTUES. 105 

While the checks on the wills of men are 
few and slight, freewill is in motive and not 
in action. In the non- physical world law rules 
as inexorably and as universally as in the phys- 
ical world. On the physical plane each thing 
develops under and through use of unchanging 
laws, according to its type. Mind and soul 
do the same. Not what a man does, but the 
motive which he cherishes in the secret re- 
cesses of his soul, is the expression of his free- 
will, and determines his growth or decay. To 
do with willing cheerfulness whatever one's 
condition in life demands, to follow one's im- 
pulses without fear, — these are at once the 
highest expression of faith and of freewill ; 
and the quickest and surest means of arriving 
at the real condition of one's soul. 

All conduct has meaning, and the ulti- 
mate effect of conduct is never the opposite 
of the motive of the one who acts. The actor 
reaps the effect of his motive, no more, how- 
ever much he seems to reap more ; for 
the material world passeth away and is 
forgotten, while the immaterial remaineth 
forever. Also, the one who receives the 
act is benefited or harmed in exact pro- 
portion to the motive ; for to receiver as well 
as to actor the material world passeth away. 



CHAPTER VI. 

SOULS BEYOND OUR PLANET. 

Our solar system revolves around a great 
sun. This great sun moves, at present, in 
about the center of the fifth zone of the great 
belt. [See Chapter II.] Our solar system 
occupies to that great sun the position which 
a planet beyond Neptune would occupy to our 
sun, — it is the outermost system which that 
great sun draws after it through the belt. Our 
solar system, in revolving around this great 
sun, passes from one side of the fifth zone of 
the- belt to the other. At present, our system 
is on the inner side of the fifth zone, near the 
border of the fourth zone. This position is 
now to our sun what the summer solstice is to 
our earth, and our sun has recently passed the 
point of its summer solstice. 

As the greatest heat and luxuriance of 
physical life in our year comes a few weeks 
after the solstice ; so the wave which is pro- 
duced by the present position of our solar sys- 
tem has not yet reached its crest, but it will in 
about two thousand years.' As the earth's 
106 



BEYOND OUR PLANET. 107 

summer brings luxuriance of physical life, so 
our sun's summer brings luxuriance of intel- 
lectual life ; and all planets in our solar sys- 
tem partake of that luxuriance. Our great 
sun gives off forces which stimulate the growth, 
development, and fruitage of thought ; as our 
sun gives off forces which stimulate the 
growth, development, and fruitage of physical 
nature. 

Our sun in revolving about its great sun 
reaches its solstice at different points of its 
orbit ; that is, at different points in the width of 
the fifth zone of the belt. If the great sun 
were stationary, the solstices might always 
occur at the same points ; but our sun being 
obliged to go forward through the belt, at the 
same time that it passes around the great sun, 
reaches its summer solstice at different points 
in the width of the fifth zone. 

As our great sun radiates intellectual force ; 
so do the suns which revolve in the four inner 
zones of the belt radiate soul force, and the 
great nine spheres, spirit force. As our sun is 
now on the inner side of the fifth zone, it is at 
the point of its orbit of greatest nearness to 
those suns and spheres who radiate soul and 
spirit force. The rays from the flame go 
everywhere without diminution ; but the forces 



108 SOULS. 

which are sent off by the suns in the belt, and 
by the globes which compose the seven spheres, 
diminish, and are felt in proportion to near- 
ness to the sources of those forces. 

This conjunction of the intellectual, soul, 
and spirit forces which influence men on our 
planet has occurred but once before in the 
existence of our sun ; and that was before there 
were any men on this earth ; and, when it will 
occur again, the author does not know. In the 
next three thousand years, man on this planet 
might have passed through the greatest oppor- 
tunity for soul and spirit advancement that he 
had ever yet had. [See Appendix VI.] 

As man individually often neglects his 
opportunities, so may man collectively on this 
planet miss this great opportunity. As man 
collective makes environments which hinder 
individuals from taking full advantage of 
opportunities ; so will the collective mass of 
men, if indifferent to this opportunity, make it 
difficult for any individual man to fully avail 
himself of it. Not only will such an influx of 
soul and spirit force not come again for many 
of the great solar years — times of revolution 
around the great sun — but the present influx 
of intellectual force will not return again until 
the next summer of our solar system ; and 



BEYOND OUR PLANET. 109 

from one of these great summers to another is 
a period of hundreds of thousands of our 
years. 

Soul and spirit growth tend to regulate 
intellectual growth, turn it into more useful 
channels, and lift it to a higher plane than it 
can reach alone ; and the intellectual growth 
of the present would be enhanced if men 
would take advantage of the higher influences 
which are flooding the earth to-day. If men 
incarnate on earth during the next three hun- 
dred years do take advantage of this wonder- 
ful summer — this conjunction of intellectual, 
soul, and spirit forces — the intellectual, soul, 
and spirit life on our planet may go on to a 
fruitage in subsequent hundreds of years such 
as man on this planet has never yet even 
dreamed of. 

To give this great opportunity solely to the 
intellect, as many men are now doing, is as 
unwise, and as wasteful of opportunity as it is 
for a youth who is born to great wealth and 
station to use them for the pleasures of the 
body only. Opportunities for material com- 
forts come in all men's earthly incarnations ; 
opportunities for great intellectual achieve- 
ments come in every summer of our solar 
system ; but extraordinary opportunities for 



no SOULS. 

soul and spirit growth come at periods so far 
apart that mortal mind can not grasp the pas- 
sage of time between those periods. The 
physical body and the intellect, and all oppor- 
tunities which minister to them perish ; and all 
which is saved from such opportunities is 
saved by souls, and souls cannot save what is 
beyond their power to appreciate. If a man 
would take such advantage of an intellectual 
opportunity as to make that opportunity a 
permanent good to him, he must rouse and 
waken his soul, make its life and needs pre- 
eminent, and gather learning and take intel- 
lectual pleasures as a soul and for the sake of 
soul. 

A greater force than mind force floods 
our planet to-day ; and souls will do ill to lose 
this chance to bask and grow in soul. Higher 
than soul is spirit ; and the present solar sum- 
mer is the first so great opportunity to receive 
spirit life that man on our planet has had. 

Each man stands between two channels of 
growth and influx of life, — the outer, which 
comes through its two bodies ; and the inner, 
which comes through the ray and whatever 
soul and spirit forces are within reach. Man 
on our planet is a fourfold being ; he has a 
physical body, a non-physical body or mind, a 



BEYOND OUR PLANET. in 

soul, and spirit. The two former perish at 
each incarnation and are renewed at each, but 
the two latter migrate. Ray is spirit. In the 
third chapter, it is said that when a soul has 
thrust from it all of its ray, it becomes a lost 
soul and goes down to extinction. A soul 
without spirit is perishable ; and the more 
spirit a soul has the greater its chances for 
continued existence. 

The spirit which a soul gets becomes a vital 
part of itself ; for spirit in man is not a separa- 
ble entity to which soul is a body. There are 
beings who are nearly pure spirit. The globes 
in the nine spheres are such beings — the pro- 
portions of soul substance to spirit substance 
in these beings decreasing from the globes in 
the outer sphere to the globes in the inner 
sphere. The more a soul approaches in com- 
position one of these beings the more perfect 
it becomes ; but it reaches this perfection, not 
by casting off soul, but by transforming or 
transmuting soul into spirit, or by the blend- 
ing of soul and spirit into one inseparable 
substance. 

Passing this summer, our solar system goes 
forward to its winter ; and that winter will 
bring, as past solar winters have, a new glacial 
epoch to our earth. Since the birth of our 



112 SOULS. 

planet earth, the solar system has passed 
through six and a half of its' great years. 
During the first two of these solar years, our 
planet bore no men ; but the mineral and 
vegetable phases of soul growth progressed 
far enough for the human to appear at the 
beginning of the third year ; and man is how 
in the middle of the fifth solar year of his 
existence, which is the seventh solar year of 
the planet's existence as a planet. The souls 
of men who are on earth to-day have, most of 
them, come through the four preceding solar 
years as men. 

At each glacial epoch, our earth has passed 
through great physical changes : old continents 
have been sunk, and new ones lifted, and the 
mineral and vegetable life has changed also. 
Each glacial epoch, so far, has been harder than 
its preceding ; because of changes in the 
interior condition of the earth. 

As much life perishes in our earth winters, 
as much is torpid, as much withdraws into the 
ground to shelter itself ; so in these great, 
solar winters life perishes, becomes torpid, and 
withdraws to the few narrow zones of life 
which are left. This is true of all forms of 
life. After the winter, comes the spring : 
after the glacial epoch, the periods of great 



BEYOND OUR PLANET. 113 

floods. Some of the life which survives the 
great winter perishes in these spring floods. 
What survives the floods, recovers and re- 
peoples the earth. 

And thus will it be until the end of our earth 
comes ; or it has left the solar system alto- 
gether ; or our system has left the great sun, 
and itself moves in the arc of the great belt. 
Such changes as these planets and suns do 
make — a stronger force gradually overcoming 
a weaker. The process of loosing from or over- 
coming a central force is gradual : but once 
overcome, the planet or system hurtles through 
the great belt at enormous speed ; and the mo- 
mentum of that motion usually carries it beyond 
the newly attracting body far enough to pro- 
duce a new orbit around that new center. 
Into this new orbit, the planet or system set- 
tles, until a greater force draws it elsewhere. 
In this process of change, much dross in the 
planet or system is burned away in the fire 
engendered by the speed : but no good form 
of life is hurt ; for all forms of soul which have 
rays are safe in any physical fire, and all these 
soul forms can build for themselves new 
bodies. 

Worlds in the great belt vary as much as 
men on earth do ; but they may be divided 



114 SOULS. 

into four classes, — great suns moving in the arc 
of the belt, smaller suns moving around the 
greater suns, planets moving around the 
smaller suns, and moons moving around the 
planets. These four classes may be divided 
into two, — sun worlds and planet worlds. The 
planet worlds are inhabited : and although 
life on them varies in innumerable ways from 
life on this planet, there is on each mineral, 
vegetable, and human life ; and on each do 
globules develop into human souls, and these 
develop, purify, and pay debts as on our own 
earth. Planet worlds are of all sizes from such 
small moons and asteroids as are in our solar 
system to worlds as large as our sun. 

Moons may become planets ; planets, suns ; 
small suns, great suns ; and great suns may 
pass from the outermost zone of the great belt 
to the innermost. Each moon, planet, and 
small sun who develops normally according 
to the privileges of its rank has two periods, — 
one in which it moves in a narrowing orbit, 
ever nearer and nearer to its center ; and one 
in which this movement is reversed, and it 
gradually withdraws from that center. In the 
former period, life as a whole on the world de- 
velops ; in the latter, it is purified, its debts 
paid, and it becomes ready for the new and 



BE YOND O UR PLANE T. 115 

higher stage of existence to which it is lifted 
on changing its center. 

Each world in the great belt has a soul ; and, 
between the smallest moon and the greatest 
sun, these world souls vary as do the souls of 
men. World souls differ from men souls in 
having powers developed which are so latent 
in men that few on our earth to-day are con- 
scious even of the possibility of possessing 
them; but each has a form and an individual- 
ity which is preserved under ordinary circum- 
stances, as among men. Among themselves, 
these world souls differ in stature, grace, beauty, 
power, knowledge, and character, quite as 
much as men do. 

World souls forrri two bodies, as do the souls 
of men, — a physical planet or sun, and a non- 
physical planet or sun ; and these are to the 
world soul what the physical body and mind 
are to the man soul. A world soul may with- 
draw its non-physical body from its physical, as 
a man soul does at physical death. The physi- 
cal planet so abandoned may go on revolving 
around its central orb for long periods, until it 
gradually breaks to pieces. Our moon is such 
an abandoned planet. 

The world soul in its non-physical body 
may go on, as a man soul in its non-phys- 



n6 SOULS. 

ical body does in the first zone on the surface 
of our planet. Also, when that non-physical 
body of a world soul is abandoned by the soul, 
it may continue to revolve about its original 
center and exert influence ; as the soulless, 
non-physical bodies in our first zone influence 
men. Whatever influence the moon exerts on 
our earth to-day is due to the non-physical 
body of the moon, which follows our earth in 
an orbit which varies little from that of the 
physical moon. These non-physical planets 
are as invisible to the eyes and through the 
instruments of men as are the non-physical 
bodies of men. 

The soul of our moon is at present an un- 
happy wanderer ; dwelling, for the most part, 
on the body of our sun ; and regretting the cir- 
cumstances which made her so soon come to 
physical and non-physical death. A world 
soul may do what a man soul ordinarily can 
not do, — it may return to bodies so abandoned, 
restore, and regenerate them. This takes great 
strength, but it is the best thing which a 
world soul can do to retrieve its follies. The 
soul of our moon has long desired to try this 
feat ; but she has been deterred because the 
soul of our earth, her own father, has thus far 
refused to assist her. 



BE YOND OUR PLANET. 1 1 7 

World souls may give up their energies to 
their personalities, and live for exterior show 
as men souls do. In our region of the great 
belt is a small sun whose soul's history illus- 
trates this. This soul developed on a planet, 
in an age so far away that a thousand million 
repeated ten times would not give the time in 
our years. Passing from that planet, after a 
long line of incarnations, this soul rested mill- 
ions of years : and then was given the work of 
incarnating as a sun ; creating a solar system ; 
caring for that system ; and leading it safely 
through its various phases of development, and 
its mighty journeyings around the great star 
Aldebaran. This was its first experience as a 
world, and starting as a sun, it became ambi- 
tious to outdo and outshine all other suns of 
its size in our portion of the belt. This ambi- 
tion it has achieved ; but at great cost to itself, 
and great harm to its family of planets. 

A planet much larger than ours, on the side 
of the great belt farthest from us, in the 
outer zone of the belt, has to-day less soul 
than is possessed by some men on our earth. 
This planet soul has grown small through pride 
and weakness of will ; and unless some great 
soul incarnates there and helps the planet, its 
soul will become extinct — gone to pieces 



n8 SOULS. 

through weak dissipation of its energies, and 
all for love of approbation. 

Next to that unfortunate planet, our own 
earth is the darkest world in the great belt. 
Proud, weak, neglectful of its own highest 
needs, the soul of our earth has grown smaller 
and smaller, "and is now near extinction. [See 
Appendix VI.] 

Souls who can love, souls who are sensitive 
to soul influences, should at once drop their 
playthings — their social dolls, commercial 
carts, political engines, intellectual puppets, 
and religious hobby-horses — ; lay aside pride 
and the follies and weaknesses which follow 
pride ; and turn their faces upward and outward 
to the great beyond. Let them withdraw from 
the din of the world, seek the solitudes of 
ocean, and the upper air of mountains ; and 
commune, each with its own ray, until the 
voices of the world without are silenced. 
Then they may hear and see those who wait 
to be heard and seen, — messengers from plan- 
ets beyond our solar system, and beings from 
suns afar who now walk the earth seeking to 
teach whoever will be taught. Having gained 
this blessedness, let these souls of men return 
to men ; and, in the din of cities, and the strife 
of our evil, artificial life, keep one hand in 



BE YOND UR PLANE T. 119 

touch with beings from beyond earth, and with 
the other reach out to help men. 

As the soul of a planet or sun may grow 
dark, break to pieces, and become extinct 
through weakness and the indulgence of debas- 
ing passions ; so may sun or planet soul become 
rebellious, thrust its guiding ray from it, seek 
to live by its own strength, and to go where it 
will, defying the laws which regulate life in the 
great belt. The bodies of such lost sun souls 
as men have seen they have called comets ; 
those of lost planet souls are never visible ; 
and all lost worlds wander in erratic orbits. 
Such lost worlds as visit our solar system 
are drawn hither by the weakness or evil 
of the souls of the worlds who compose the 
system. The cry of one of these lost sun 
souls is the most terrible sound which ever 
rings through the great belt. Even the flame 
flickers and wavers in pain at that cry. 

The flame is at the center, but its rays are 
at the circumference, and everywhere between 
center and circumference : so that in that flame 
is felt the pain of each living thing ; and is 
heard the cry which rises from each oppressed, 
suffering, struggling, and lost being from the 
smallest crystal on a planet to the greatest 
sun in the great belt : for that flame is the 



120 SOULS. 

father of worlds and men, and of all things, 
which exist in our universe ; and the suffering 
and pain in the heart of that flame will not 
cease until the brotherhood of all living things 
from world to man, from man to crystal, is 
recognized and respected. As that flame feels 
pain, and hears the cry of suffering; so it feels 
the joy of healthful activities, and hears the 
cry of noble achievement and of difficulties 
overcome ; and every man may give the flame 
such joy if he will. 

All world souls start on a higher level than 
do the souls of men on planets ; for every 
world soul was once a man soul. When a man 
soul leaves a planet, it must incarnate on 
another planet, or go to school amid the 
throngs of souls who live on suns, beneath 
their photospheres of fire ; until the man soul 
is strong enough and great enough to be a 
planet or a sun soul, and has knowledge 
enough to manage the affairs of a world or 
of a system of worlds. 

The ranks and hierarchies of planets and 
suns are many ; and the days and years of the 
lives of souls in these ranks begin where those 
of men leave off, and increase to the days of 
the greatest sun, and to the years of one revo- 
lution around the great belt. From the lowest 



BE YOND UR PLANE T. 121 

rung of this great ladder of achievement and 
experience to the highest, the soul of each 
man on earth to-day may climb, if it have the 
strength to will that it shall. Beyond and 
above the worlds in the great belt, are beings 
to whose life and duties the greatest suns in 
the belt aspire. To these may man also as- 
pire, as a crystal in the depths of ocean may 
aspire to reach the top of Mt. Everest. This 
the crystal may do, not as a crystal, but as a 
man. The soul of the crystal grows to the 
soul of a man ; the soul of a man, to the soul of 
a world ; the soul of a world, to a great angel ; 
and a great angel, to the center of an universe. 
The soul of man is a complex being, made up 
of many entities. In the process of growth 
and development, souls unite to form larger 
wholes. This does not involve the destruction 
of the individual consciousness, but of separ- 
ate material existence only. 

The soul of a planet or sun will hereafter, in 
these pages, be called a god ; not only to dis- 
tinguish it from the soul of a man, but because 
these world souls have been called gods by all 
the races of men who have inhabited our plan- 
et from the first great solar year of man's 
existence to the present time. 

As the wills of men determine their own 



dj 



122 SOULS. 

lives and yet must submit to the wills of men 
collectively ; so do the wills of the gods deter- 
mine their lives, and yet are under allegiance 
to the wills of all the gods. The wills of the gods 
in one rank submit to the wills of the gods in 
a higher rank ; the wills of the highest gods 
submit to the wills of the angels ; and the 
wills of the angels is the will of the flame. 
In proportion to the power which any soul, 
from the humblest crystal to the greatest sun, 
has of making its will coincide or move in har- 
mony with the will of the flame, is the rapidity 
of growth, and the ultimate usefulness of that 
soul to itself, to other souls, and to the flame. 

A god develops as does a soul ; and to soul 
and god alike, "The night of the body is the 
day of the spirit." In winter, men as a whole 
instinctively leave material occupations for 
study, social and domestic life, and such med- 
itation as brings spirit growth. It would be 
better if this instinct were more respected and 
followed, and trade and manufacture were 
allowed the lull which agriculture has. 

Each winter is to our planet god what the 
night of a man is to his day ; and the great 
winter corresponds to the time which a man 
spends between incarnations. It has occurred, 
thus far in the history of our planet, that its 



BEYOND OUR PLANET. 123 

soul — our planet god — has reached his great- 
est heights of soul and spirit appreciation just 
before the great glacial winter, when the body 
of the earth was growing torpid. 

Waking from the sleep of the depths of that 
glacial winter, the earth god has tried to im- 
press on his refreshed and teeming body fairer 
forms, and on the souls of men nobler and 
more generous impulses. These efforts have 
produced the conditions in external nature 
and in men which tradition has handed down 
as gardens of Eden, a golden age, days when 
the gods walked among men and taught them. 
These stories, as a sparkling mountain brook, 
have become fouled in flowing down the ages : 
and unless a man can go back to the source of 
the brook, and drink at the original fountain, 
he better drop his volumes of stories ; let all 
religions of the past and of the present die ; 
and seek in the opportunities of to-day to cre- 
ate a new garden of Eden, a new golden age, 
and to write fresh oracles from the gods. 

Let him seek to know the god whose 
oracles he writes for the obedience and wor- 
ship of men, and to bind as fetters on coming 
generations. A god who stands beside a man 
and speaks, or does marvels before his eyes 
may possess less character than the man him- 



124 SOULS. 

self. Power over nature is no evidence of char- 
acter ; nor fair sounding phrases, nor anathe- 
mas, nor asseverations of greatness, evidences 
of worth ; and when a god asks a man to do 
what he as a man would blush to do, let him 
refrain from doing, whatever the god may 
threaten. 

A man's soul is tried by many powers before 
it may take a seat among the lower gods ; and 
the higher will not come near him until he 
needs what the lower gods cannot give. All 
the gods respect courage ; and a god who can 
blow out the life of a man with a puff of his 
breath, as a man may blow out a little candle- 
flame, will respect that man if he dare think 
his own thoughts, and go his own way, even 
against the teaching and advice of the god. 
The god may be sorry if the man's thoughts 
are false and his choice of way foolish or dan- 
gerous ; but so long as the man is strong and 
honorable, he will not be molested, but trusted 
to find his own way out of both error and dan- 
ger. It is the weak, false, proud, egotistic 
soul who is helped by neither gods nor men. 

The gods like obedience and worship ; and 
the lower they are in rank, the more desir- 
ous they are of fastening these upon men, and 
the more jealous they are of other influences. 



BE YOND UR PLANE T. 125 

The flame desires neither obedience nor wor- 
ship nor prostration nor ceremonies nor love 
nor anything of any globule, soul, god, or 
angel in the universe, but integrity. That a 
man shall stand on his own feet, speak the 
truth, and dare to be himself, — this is what the 
flame asks of every soul ; and in proportion 
as a soul has reached this integrity does it 
seek to give opportunity for integrity to every 
other soul. 

Does the reader wish to know how the 
gods look? Each world soul or god in the 
great belt, and each globe or great angel in 
the nine central spheres takes the human form 
at will ; and in changing from rest to activity, 
these beings change from a sphere to a man 
or woman in form ; and it is in the human form 
that they usually visit men. When a human 
soul has seen the faces of the gods of our solar 
system, he will have a new conception of the 
power of the human face to express nobility ; 
when he has seen the face of a great god, he 
will not again look willingly at statue or paint- 
ing, on our planet, which represents a god ; 
and when he has seen the face of a great angel, 
he will close his eyes in pain at the imperfec- 
tions in the face of the greatest man or woman 
whom he has known or loved. This pain will 



126 SOULS. 

pass : but the picture which he carries in his 
heart will have killed covetousness of earthly 
goods and the products of men ; and any pride 
which he, in his ignorance, may have felt at 
any achievement of his own. 

This blessedness of seeing the gods and of 
talking with them will come to every man on 
earth whose soul is clean enough and brave 
enough to use to the full the present great 
opportunity for soul and spirit growth : and as 
a man works for his children and would fain 
leave them better off than he was at starting, 
so should men to-day garner stores of knowl- 
edge and soul and spirit qualities to hand down 
to peoples yet unborn ; and each soul who 
works in this harvest will itself, in coming in- 
carnations, eat the bread of this harvest until 
ready to pass beyond earth. 

As parents hold the threads of the lives of 
their children during youth, so the rays which 
guide men are given to the keeping of the 
gods. The rays which belong to men on 
earth pass through the great sun around which 
our solar system revolves, from that great sun 
to our sun, from our sun to our planet, and 
from our planet to each individual entity from 
crystal to man. As children develop, they 
often grow away from parental influence, and 



BE YOND O UR PLANE T. 127 

seek higher ideajs of conduct and wisdom : so 
may a soul detach its ray from planet, sun, and 
great sun ; and have the line of its ray direct 
to the flame. 

The rays of most men on earth to-day pass 
to the god of our planet. He is their god, he 
who hears and answers their prayers, and 
whose character is their conception of deity. 
The rays of other men pass to the sun god, and 
his character is their conception of deity. A 
few men have rays detached from our solar 
system entirely. 

Each man's ray is held by a lower god until 
the man rises to the consciousness of some- 
thing higher in god-head ; his ray is then 
dropped by the lower god, and a higher at- 
tends to his needs. Each man's prayer goes 
to the god who can, with the least pain, watch 
his character and 'needs. Often the ray of a 
man is taken by some other planetary god, or 
by some other sun god in our great system ; 
but no ray is held by any god beyond the time 
when a soul conceives of something different 
to worship. As a man rises in the god he 
worships, the lower gods cease to be his rulers, 
and may become his friends. In this manner, 
a man may take a place among the gods 
while still a man. 



128 SOULS. 

As a man forms a friendship to-day which 
he is sure is the noblest privilege which he will 
ever have, and circles closer and closer around 
that friend; and months or years afterward 
wakes up to a feeling that the friendship is not 
so great a privilege, begins gradually to with- 
draw, and to let the friendship die : so is man 
in his worship of the gods. The probabilities 
are that neither the friend nor the god has 
changed or become less worthy, but that the 
man himself has grown ; and the association 
with the friend or god may have been the 
means of that growth. 

When a man is tempted to despise or say 
ill things of a god, let him reflect on that god's 
responsibilities and the limitations of that 
god's powers. Could the man do that god's 
tasks? To work with patience and power 
through a year, as a man through a day ; to love 
and take an interest in nations and millions, as 
a man does in the members of his family, — 
these are among the smaller differences be- 
tween the duties of our planet god and the 
duties of a man; and the duties of a great god 
no man can comprehend. 

The souls of men as the souls of worlds, 
have two movements about any center to 
which they choose to give allegiance, and both 



BE YOND O UR PLANE T. 129 

movements are a spiral — the first an inward to- 
ward the center, and the second an outward 
away from the center. For each soul on our 
planet there are six great centers, — self, family, 
nation, earth god, sun god, and great sun god. 
About each of these, there are two motions, 
twelve motions in all. The first of these move- 
ments, in each case, is an effort to attain some- 
thing, a process of development ; the second, an 
effort to overcome something, a process of puri- 
fication. This flow and ebb, development and 
purification, go on through every phase and 
stage of life on planets from a crystal to a puri- 
fied soul, and in the great belt from a moon to 
the greatest sun. From the lowliest man to 
the greatest sun there are innumerable small 
centers to be attained and overcome ; but of 
great centers for men on this earth, six only ; 
and the attainment and overcoming of these 
are indispensable to the development, purifi- 
cation and completion of each soul. These 
twelve labors a man soul may complete on a 
planet, so far as planet life allows them to be 
completed; but most souls pass from our earth 
after having completed from five to nine of 
them. 

When a man soul has performed these twelve 
labors he has detached his ray from our great 



\I 



13© SOULS. 

sun ; but his labors are not ended. Before his 
great night of rest can come, he must conceive 
of the character of the flame and live in accorda?ice 
with that conception. A labor is action, and 
tested by action. When a soul has performed 
this labor, whether it be the soul of a man or 
of a planet or of a sun, that soul may leave its 
labors on a world or in the great belt and go 
home for rest. When the soul has crossed 
the belt and reached the edge of the great gulf 
the last ordeal awaits it. Poising on the outer 
border of the great gulf, the soul of the author 
saw souls of men and worlds come to this 
ordeal. 

The great nine spheres were no more spheres, 
nor was the flame a flame, nor were there any 
clouds. There was a light only, a light intol- 
erable to Took upon ; and in that light, the 
globes of the nine spheres lost their forms, and 
were blended into one homogeneous blaze. A 
band of that light crossed the gulf, folded a 
world in its embrace, and the world was no 
more. A band crossed the gulf, paused at the 
feet of a man, and the man shrank and turned 
away. The greatest fear that a soul ever 
knows was upon the man, the fear of extinc- 
tion. He had met this fear in a small way at 
the end of every incarnation ; but nothing like 



BEYOND OUR PLANET. 131 

this, for the light halting at his feet was not 
physical fire, and of its touch he knew nothing. 
The longing to come home had been in his 
soul for ages : and the hope and joy of that 
home-coming had kept his feet steadfast in the 
hard upward way, through the long, long 
journey behind him ; had enabled him at last to 
live in accordance with the character of the 
flame ; and had given him courage to cross the 
great belt. 

He may have come here as a visitor, found 
the great light withdrawn into itself, the globes 
of the great spheres in their places, crossed the 
gulf, and visited the interior of those spheres ; 
for a soul who carries love and truth in its 
breast, and goes on quests with a pure desire 
for knowledge, may go alone wherever it has 
the strength and the courage to go, and none 
will say it nay. Now, the man soul finds 
no shelf on which it may alight after the long 
flight over the gulf, but this radiant fire bridge 
only ; and no other soul may cross with him 
on the bridge which halts at his feet, for 
"Every soul goes alone to the bosom of the 
father." 

The man soul looked back over the way it 
had come, and turned back ; for behind was 
nothing to satisfy. At last, the soul summons 



132 SOULS. 

courage to brave extinction and moves toward 
the bridge ; and that hand of blinding light 
folds it, lifts it, and carries it to the center. As 
the great light withdraws into itself, the nine 
spheres resume their forms, and each globe is 
in its place as perfect and as separate as 
before ; but the man soul has been indrawn 
with the light and is — if it exist anywhere — 
inside the sphere which rests in the cubical 
frame in the center of the great nine spheres. 
After a time, a band of light emerges from the 
flame, and gently sets the man soul on its feet. 
It is the same soul, but changed. That rest in 
the heart of the flame has burned away all the 
dross and all the weariness and every evil, 
hateful memory of the long pilgrimages ; 
still the soul is but a child in development and 
attainment, and ages and ages of effort lie be- 
fore it. After rest and pleasures which in 
length and quality no other place in our uni- 
verse affords, work will be given to this soul. 
The work will not be the same as before ; 
but according to the power and capacity of 
the soul will be the tasks assigned it ; and 
the higher the rank, the longer, the greater, 
and the more arduous are the tasks. 



CHAPTER VII. 

SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS AND FREEDOM. 

Imagine a section of earth suffused with a 
faint light, encircling that a broad band of 
darkness, and beyond the darkness a brilliant, 
white light. Let the faint light represent the 
intellect, and the brilliant light the soul. No 
man leaves the light of the intellect or 
earthly, perishable mind, and comes to see by 
the light of the soul without crossing the band 
of darkness ; and the ways across the darkness 
are as many as there are souls on earth. 

One man enters the darkness, wanders about 
awhile, comes out into the earthly light at a 
point distant from that at which he entered the 
darkness, loudly proclaims that he has crossed 
the dark band, and calls upon all men to follow 
him. Another enters the darkness, gropes 
about, returns to the earthly light, declares 
that there is no light beyond, and calls upon 
men to accept his statement as fact, and cease 
to try to reach or to investigate what does not 
exist. Another gropes his way so far across 
the darkness as to discern the light beyond ; 
133 



134 SOULS. 

and, elated with having seen it, hastens back 
to tell the fact, but can give no intelligible 
account of the light. Another crosses, stands 
in the full blaze, returns, and is silent ; what 
has been seen is too sacred to tell, lest it suffer 
distortion or desecration in the minds of the 
ignorant and the irreverent. Another crosses, 
penetrates the great light, gathers a bundle of 
valuable knowledges, and returns with intent to 
put them forth ; on entering the earthly light, 
the power of the intellect seizes him and forces 
him to justify and to test all which he has 
brought by his own reason, and to the reasons 
of other men. Another, returning, pours his 
precious new wine into old bottles which are 
rotten and musty with age — the bottles of 
common religious expression. 

What this age needs are souls who can, not 
only cross the band of darkness and intelli- 
gently investigate the light beyond, but who 
are not in bondage to the intellectual force, 
nor in love with the old bottles. 

Imagine a range of mountains having a suc- 
cession of peaks which lift themselves far 
above the line of continual snow. At the base 
of this mountain range, put the valleys and 
cities of men. Let the snow represent the 
knowledge which comes from beyond our 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND FREEDOM. 135 

planet ; and the climbing necessary to reach it, 
the effort which a soul must make to get such 
knowledge. The paths up the mountains are 
as many as men choose to make, some easier, 
some harder. The highest peaks can not be 
seen from the valleys below, much less can 
an idea be formed of how the earth and the 
affairs of men look from the top of one of 
them. Sometimes the whole range is so hid- 
den by fogs and clouds — all of which rise 
from the valleys — that it is hard for men to 
believe that the peaks exist. 

One man begins to climb, comes to the first 
snow ; and his feet, being muddy with earth, 
he fouls the snow at every step. Contented, 
the man returns to the valleys, tells men he 
knows all about the snow, and describes it ; and 
what he describes is that pure snow fouled by 
the mud of his thoughts treading it over and 
over. Another man climbs farther, even so 
far that the mud has been all rubbed away 
from his feet and garments ; but his body and 
breath are so hot that any attempt to examine 
the snow at close range results in the destruc- 
tion of it. This man returns and describes, 
not the snow, but the melted product of the 
fires of his own passions. 

What is needed to-day are men brave 



I3 6 SOULS. 

enough to climb to the upper heights ; and so 
free from prejudice and passion as to be able 
to reproduce what is seen, in pictures and 
words which are intelligible to all men. 

Whatever path is taken across the darkness, 
or up the mountain range, three things are 
essential for success in the journey, — honor- 
able motives for the journey and for every 
step of the way, a teachable mind, and an 
obedient body. 

An obedient body is one which has no will 
of its own, but cheerfully submits to the com- 
mands of the soul — not a body which lacks 
sensitiveness, but one whose sensations do not 
rule mind or soul. Whether a given soul pos- 
sesses such a body, no other soul can tell, and 
probably not its possessor without prolonged 
trial of it. The nature and extent of the trial 
each soul must determine for itself ; for the fet- 
ters which bind soul in bondage to the mate- 
rial world are not the same for any two souls. 
The following are some of the means by which 
the author found out the nature and extent of 
the power of her physical body over her soul, 

In October, 1880, meat foods were dis- 
carded. From May, 1881, to October, 1884, 
the diet consisted almost exclusively of breads 
and fruits, sometimes of uncooked grains and 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND FREEDOM 137 

fruits. From February 4, 1889, to November 
17, 1 89 1, the body was nourished on uncooked 
products. During that period of two years 
and nine months, a record was kept of all food 
and drink which had touched fire ; and the 
whole would barely suffice for the meals for 
forty days. During that period, no animal 
product but milk was tasted, and that for less 
than four weeks only. Twice in that period, 
for six weeks, but one meal of food was taken 
in twenty - four hours. In one of these six- 
weeks' periods, that one meal consisted, each 
day, of ten ounces of raw oat meal, soaked in 
cold water, a few sprigs of parsley, and a small 
handful of dried fruits; in the other, for four 
weeks the one meal consisted of tree fruits and 
nuts, and during the other two weeks of tree 
fruits alone. Once no food or drink was 
tasted for seven days. 

As conduct has, in itself, no value in releas- 
ing soul from the power of the body, and 
motive alone determines the result to the soul, 
it is fitting to give the motives for these efforts. 
Meat was discarded for the sole purpose of 
ceasing to be a party to the cruelties which 
attend the breeding and slaughter of cattle, 
and to the debasement of the mind and heart 
of the butcher. Cooked food was given up in 



138 SOULS. 

hopes of finding a way to release woman from 
bondage to the kitchen stove ; and from giv- 
ing much precious time and energy to the ma- 
terial life, to the neglect or complete exclusion 
of the mental and psychic needs of a house- 
hold. These two steps were begun long be- 
fore any book treating of occult matters had 
been read, and without the knowledge that any 
body of men on earth holds that there is a 
relation between physical habits connected 
with food, and spiritual growth. The third 
experiment — living on one meal a day of a 
small amount and poor quality of food — was 
made out of sympathy with the very poor ; with 
desire, through sharing some of their experi- 
ences, to better understand their privations, 
and especially the moral effects of those pri- 
vations. The seven days fast alone is the only 
asceticism or ordeal ever undertaken by the 
author for which she had no exterior reason. 

In childhood, the author was conscious of a 
world which her senses did not penetrate. 
Sometimes she was so near penetrating it that 
the ear caught indistinct tones, and the eye 
saw what seemed a veil of black air which shut 
her in. Through that enveloping veil, ideas 
came, in every passing year ; until scientific 
studies bade her discredit such sources of 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND FREEDOM. 1 39 

information. Still the veil was there ; and 
through it unseen presences spoke, sometimes 
with startling distinctness During the past 
ten years that veil has thinned, until the world 
which it once hid is as real, and parts of it as 
familiar, as the world which the physical 
senses recognize. 

This thinning of the veil is due, not to 
the physical habits, nor to any experi- 
ments on the physical plane ; but to the con- 
tinued motive in the soul to find or to make a 
way of life more beautiful and satisfying for 
herself, and as she hoped for other men; as a 
scientist tries, now this way, now that, to wrest 
from nature some precious secret which, when 
known, will ease the burden of life for all men. 
Although none of the author's experiments on 
the physical plane were for the purpose of sub- 
duing the body, she did find through them 
how much power her body had to hinder her 
soul, and how heavy a burden its desires were. 

A man may easily deceive himself in regard 
to the obedience of his body, and the power of 
his soul to resist its entreaties For a week 
or two the limitations imposed may be easy; 
beyond that, struggle begins; and when the 
time extends into the months, he will begin to 
know of what stuff he is really made; espec- 



14° SOULS. 

ially if, in the case of food, he lives where the 
smell of forbidden foods is under his nostrils, 
and he partakes of his fare at ordinary tables. 

The time which it takes to bring a physical 
body into obedience depends a good deal on 
the attitude of the mind. The mind must 
drop all notions of a return to the former 
modes of life; and must so acquiesce in the 
soul's desire to be free as to cheerfully and 
firmly meet both remonstrance and ridicule. 

As for the mind itself, it must drop its toys, 
and its cherished privilege of tyrannizing over 
both body and soul; its prejudices and pas- 
sions must die, its foulnesss be cleansed, or 
ever the soul may use it to report accurately 
what is beyond the darkness, or is seen on the 
mountain height. The mind must become 
willing to look at unfamiliar bodies of 
knowledge impartially ; to cast off all fear 
of the consequences of such examination ; 
and to be ready, at any hour, to throw 
away its most cherished convictions and to 
take cheerfully other and different ones in 
their places. The mind's horizon must en- 
large: self, family, church, nation, country, race, 
sex, — these circles are too narrow to be drawn 
about a soul who aims to see wholes in regard 
to our planet life, not to speak of the beyond. 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND FREEDOM. 141 

As the body grows cleaner, its senses 
become more acute and trustworthy, and its 
sensations more delicate and pleasurable ; as 
the mind grows cleaner, its impulses become 
more generous, its powers more sure and cap- 
able in action, and its activities produce more 
keen delights; as the soul grows more free, 
and realizes the willing, cheerful obedience of 
body and mind, life is lifted to a higher plane. 
The man is a child again, but a child on a 
higher level; and all life and opportunity lie 
before him as if starting on a new incarnation; 
and every human affection and relation are 
more dear than before. 

The rapidity and thoroughness with which 
body and mind may be cleansed are depend- 
ent upon the motive in the soul. No asceti- 
cism in body and mind will free a soul from 
grossness; and the power to leave its bodies is 
to a gross soul a curse and not a blessing. A 
soul weighted with foul motives can not rise, 
even to the third zone in the atmosphere of 
our planet; and to investigate the first zone 
and the caverns is neither pleasurable, nor 
very profitable. 

The non-physical gallery from which the 
events in the careers of souls, which have been 
used for illustration in this book, were obtained 



142 SOULS. 

is one portion of the mind of our planet god — 
a part of the non- physical body which that 
god soul possesses, as a man possesses a mind ? 
and a part of that mind is memory — the plan- 
et's memory. The door of that memory is 
open to any soul who seeks such knowledge 
as it contains from a motive which an honor- 
able man would not blush to own. Ignoble 
motives do not open the recesses of the plan- 
et's mind, nor the door of the great beyond, 
any more than they open doors to charmed 
interiors among men. Men may deceive one 
another in such a matter; but they do not often 
deceive the gods, nor those who guard the 
doors of the gods. 

As the first essential to open these doors is 
honor, the second is teachableness. A dog- 
matic man who already knows everything 
need not think that any god will take the 
trouble to try to teach him ; or that by himself, 
he can get much that is of value. The mental 
attitude which draws the secrets of nature into 
the hands of a man is indispensable in quests 
into non-physical realms. The more learning 
which a mind has with which to interpret what 
is seen, the more interesting and fruitful will 
these studies be; but that learning must be 
held lightly, subject to correction. 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND FREEDOM. 143 

If a great person of antiquity could take 
form and enter a man's door as a guest, would 
the man immediately ply him with questions 
about personal affairs, and try to degrade his 
guest to the level of a juggler and a fortune- 
teller ? Would the man deem it courteous 
to his guest to set aside his own mind, and to 
ask his guest whether he should do this or 
that petty thing ? In proportion as a guest 
from the non-physical realms satisfies any 
such personal curiosity, or makes itself the 
guide of the every-day affairs of a man, should 
be a man's suspicions of the desirableness of 
that guest's presence, and of the value and 
truthfulness of that guest's statements. 

Each soul grows by doing its own thinking, 
and bearing the burdens of its own responsi- 
bilities; and no being from the non-physical 
realms whose friendship is worth having will 
forget that fact. Gods are no more likely than 
men to subject themselves to ignoble treat- 
ment. While they are tender, patient, and 
divinely compassionate at the limitations and 
blunders of men ; and will not forsake any soul 
so long as it desires good, but will respond to 
every sincere prayer for light and knowledge, 
— their duties, in their own realms, are suffi- 
ciently arduous ; and their presence beside a 



144 SOULS. 

soul on earth or when visiting the beyond 
should call forth all the modesty and courtesy 
of the soul so visited. 

A soul will do best to get what it can alone, 
and to ask questions of other beings only when 
such beings volunteer help ; and to be shy of 
accepting help until the rank and character of 
the being who volunteers the help is known : 
for all are not gods who claim to be ; and many 
are the deceitful snares which are laid for the 
feet of such souls as, neglecting their own 
earthly affairs and moved by petty desires, seek 
to invade the unknown. 

A soul with honorable motives, and served 
by a teachable mind, need fear neither drag- 
ons, chimeras, nor any evil whatsoever ; but in 
the process of the development of a soul's 
senses, a weak or an impure soul would often 
be in danger of being led into error, through 
lack of the power to discriminate. 

The senses may develop unequally. A soul 
who hears, but does not see, on the non-phys- 
ical plane is at the mercy of any being who 
may care to whisper in its ear. In proportion 
to its own strength and purity, is the safety of 
any soul during the transition period when 
hearing is fitful, indistinct, and often wanting; 
and the sight wanting, dim, or fleeting. Dur- 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND FREEDOM. 145 

ing that period, a soul should be wary ; should 
hold fast to the judgment, reason, and discre- 
tion of its own mind ; and not allow itself to be 
led into thought or conduct which its common 
sense cannot approve. Until a man can see 
non-physical objects and beings as plainly 
as he sees physical ones, be at no loss to dis- 
tinguish between the two kinds, and to distin- 
guish one non-physical being from another, let 
him not dare trust his impressions, or report 
what he hears. The first zone of our non- 
physical planet is full of idle, mischievous, and 
malicious beings who like no better sport than 
to play with, deceive, and mystify — if they do 
nothing worse — each person whose develop- 
ing non-physical senses gives them a chance to 
make their presence known or felt. Courage, 
patience, levelheadedness, and loyalty to 
one's own common sense are as neces- 
sary in these explorations as in penetrating an 
Africa. When a soul has displayed these 
qualities sufficiently, and for so long a time as 
to prove its sincerity and strength, it will be 
helped by higher beings. Let a soul wait for 
that help to try its first venture beyond its own 
body walls. After a few journeys apart from 
the body, under the care of a trustworthy guide, 
the soul may dare go when or where it desires. 



146 SOULS. 

The reader may be interested to know what 
sensations attend the withdrawal of soul from 
body. The author can give her own experi- 
ences only. At the first time, there was much 
pain, and a feeling that the body was being 
torn asunder : at the second, there was no 
pain, but a whirling, buzzing sensation in the 
brain, as if a spring tightly coiled had been 
loosened^; and this produced dizziness against 
which it was necessary to brace one's self, so 
as not to lose consciousness : at the third time, 
the same whirling sensation was felt, but it 
was less violent : after that, sensation and 
effort gradually lessened, until now the process 
is as easy and as free from sensation as the 
laying off a garment. In no case, was there 
difficulty or painful sensation on returning 
into the body. 

At first, all consciousness went with the soul ; 
and it was necessary to leave the body in bed 
and properly protected as for sleep. After a 
time, the power to divide the consciousness 
was gained ; until now the soul can leave the 
body awake, active, and able to attend to ordi- 
nary affairs as if the soul were present. This 
dividing of the consciousness gives at first 
curious experiences : what consciousness re- 
mains with the body has a strange, forlorn, 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND FREEDOM. 147 

lonely feeling ; and the body seems to it like 
an empty shell. At such times, if persons are 
present, or it is necessary for the mind to en- 
gage in conversation, it can readily do so. 
The soul, returning, impresses on the physical 
brain what it has seen or heard, as a man writes 
what he knows on paper ; or the soul, standing 
outside of the two bodies — body and mind — 
the two, the soul and the mind encased in the 
physical body, talk with each other, as two 
persons do. 

Journeys and investigations in the non-phys- 
ical realms take time, strength of body and 
mind, and power of soul to resist the excitements 
of unusual and unheard of experiences. A 
person who would successfully pursue such 
investigations must give himself up to them 
as faithfully, conscientiously, and laboriously, 
as a scientist does to his experiments and an 
explorer to his travels. Knowledge worth 
having is not won without effort and toil, and 
often the toil is proportioned to the value of 
the knowledge sought. 

The freewill of each soul so far determines 
its path, and so far changes its progress and 
modes of development, that no soul can mark 
out a line of action or thought which will free 
another soul from its chains of bondage. Even 



148 SOULS. 

if the whole line of a soul's past incarnations 
were inspected, the inspector could not be sure 
of what the soul most needed ; because the 
secret recesses of all souls are inviolate and 
unknown, even to the gods. The gods see 
with far greater clearness than men do ; but 
they, in exerting influence, fail in measures 
which they thought were sure to bring the 
desired result, while some small event of which 
they took no account, as of no importance, 
exerts the very influence which they had de- 
sired to avoid or to produce for the soul whom 
they were watching and trying to help. Seeing 
farther than men, the gods can see the proba- 
bilities before a given soul ; but to tell surely 
what will occur no god can ; and gods are 
mistaken in their prophesies as well as men. 
The inviolate recesses of every soul of man 
and world, and the freewills of souls contin- 
ually vary the threads of life in individuals, 
nations, and worlds. 

Every failure which a man meets is due, 
primarily, to some imperfection in his own soul, 
no matter how plainly he thinks he sees the 
causes of failure outside of himself ; but 
events which men call failures may be the 
noblest successes, for all real successes are 
moral. The body and mind are mere chan- 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND FREEDOM. 149 

nels ; and while every soul has need of a 
strong body, and a sane mind, and may 
be thankful to possess them, they are but 
tools which like a carpenter a soul picks up, 
fashions, sharpens, uses for a time, and then 
throws aside for rust and decay to devour. 

The author, from her own experiences, can 
offer no promises of easy paths across the 
darkness or up the mountain range ; and she 
leaves each reader to judge for himself, from 
the contents of this book, whether the results are 
worth the cost. She thinks they are : and that 
thought has bred the hope that some, by read- 
ing this book, may be induced to try the same 
lines of investigation ; so that errors in it may 
be corrected, and the knowledges which it con- 
tains may be increased by the labors of others. 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER I. 

JESUS OF NAZARETH; AND THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

There never was any Jesus of Nazareth and 
disciples, such as have been handed down in 
the New Testament. The New Testament 
was composed in the first century A. D., by 
adepts, who hoped by means of it to help men. 
The original manuscripts were different from 
the present copies, for later adepts made both 
omissions and additions. 

The adepts who did this work were men of 
strong religious convictions, who had been 
educated in the religious monasteries of those 
days — secret orders, corresponding to orders 
out of and in the Catholic church — ; and who 
sought, through these writings, to give to men 
at large some of the knowledge which they 
had gained, as adepts in this age have done 
through the theosophical movement. 

For the purpose of firing men's minds and 
of giving them something tangible to fix upon, 
these adepts combined in consenting to use 
certain names and phrases, which in their secret 
sanctuaries had spiritual meaning or were purely 
150 



JESUS OF NAZARETH. 151 

symbolic, to definite persons and events ; and 
thus grew up the personal Jesus, his body of 
teachings, and his twelve disciples and their 
teachings. The names and characters of some 
of these disciples were fictitious, others were 
those of some of the bolder of the first com- 
pany of adepts who instituted the movement. 

Judas was, himself, an adept of more learn- 
ing than Jesus, who, not liking the manner in 
which this colleague used occult powers, nor 
the form which his teaching tended to assume, 
informed against him ; and the rabble put him 
to death. The man thus betrayed and handed 
down to posterity as a god was ambitious of 
power, and craved adulation ; and, through 
these qualities, was seduced into ways which 
were repulsive to men who were more noble 
than himself. 

This man's name was used by those who 
made the first gospels, because his death had 
made an impression on the imaginations of the 
populace at the time ; and so the fact of the 
crucifixion was reported and the death made 
vicarious, in order to appeal to the imagina- 
tions of men whom these learned adepts 
regarded as too vulgar, stupid, and ignorant to 
receive more spiritual ideas. Moreover, they 
thought that the idea of vicarious atone- 



152 SOULS. 

ment would help to start fresh impulses 
toward good in men who were so heavily 
weighted with foulness and sin that only 
by such freedom from their own past as 
this idea promised could they be roused to 
make any effort at all. They had wrought bet- 
ter for mankind, if they had had sufficient 
faith in the possibilities of growth in subse- 
quent incarnations, for such weak and erring 
ones, as to have told the truth. How well they 
gauged the possibilities of man to seize upon 
some idea which promises immunity from the 
consequences of sin, the history of Christianity 
shows ; and how baleful such an idea is, let all 
the persecutions and teachings of separation 
because of dogma, and all the cruel supersti- 
tions and religious wars of the past eighteen 
centuries demonstrate. 

Judas did not hang himself, did not receive 
money for the betrayal ; and it was by his 
arts that the body of Jesus was restored to 
life. After the restoration, Judas said, that as 
he had restored Jesus, so he would destroy 
him, if he did not hide himself and trouble 
man no more. 

After a secret farewell to his closest follow- 
ers, Jesus retired to the desert wilderness near 
Palestine, and there lived a hermit to old age. 



JESUS OF NAZARETH. 1 5 3 

He spent the time in study, and in the prac- 
tice of various forms of asceticism by which 
he sought to win such occult powers as had 
been denied to him in the secret brotherhood 
to which he had belonged. Among these 
asceticisms was living on uncooked food, 
which he did for more than thirty years. 

A friend of Jesus, who has been handed 
down to posterity as St. John, spent a portion 
of those years with him ; and, between them, 
they wrote parts of what are now the gospels, 
the letters of St. John, and the Apocalypse. 
These writings — the originals of which were 
destroyed when the Alexandrian library was 
burned — were made the nucleus of the New 
Testament writings : but the higher and holier 
parts of even those portions which were com- 
posed by Jesus and John were added by 
another adept, one who in a subsequent incar- 
nation became the head of the order of adepts 
in Thibet ; and who maintained by his arts 
that position and life in one body for almost 
one thousand years. At his death, the light 
of adeptship in Asia went out ; for no suc- 
cessor of his, and no other of all the brother- 
hoods on earth, has possessed or possesses to- 
day the knowledge, power, skill, or the high 
and holy spiritual perceptions which he had. 



T54 SOULS. 

The soul of the man whose life and death 
were fixed up to serve as the model called 
Jesus, was the soul of Alexander the Great, 
whose soul's career is given in Chapter I. It 
is not strange that such a soul then thirsted 
for power, desired to be accepted as the Jew- 
ish messiah, and maneuvered for a temporal 
as well as for a spiritual kingdom. 

Of the twelve disciples, those who were not 
fictitious are, with one exception, in the United 
States. One is a railroad magnate, another a 
college president, another a teacher who is 
widely known and loved, and two are women. 
The mother of Jesus lives near the upper head 
waters of the Hudson river ; and John the Bap- 
tist is in Russia — a second time, "A voice cry- 
ing in the wilderness." Many of the Christian 
fathers are also with us. The author hopes 
she offends none by telling that the Rev. 
Phillips Brooks was a reincarnation of the soul 
of St. Augustine. 

Not church worthies alone are incarnate 
among men to-day ; but many who have been 
eminent in history, literature, science, art, and 
music. Richard Wagner has a soul so unrest- 
ing that already has it reincarnated, in Ne- 
braska. Great souls are beginning to incar- 
nate in large numbers, in our land, because of 



JESUS OF NAZARE TH. 155 

the destiny which lies before us if our people 
can rouse themselves to the moral heroism 
which is needed, and prove worthy to be the 
leading nation of the earth ; but our land must 
lead in mercy, humility, and righteousness if 
it would lead at all. 

A good many who have known past great- 
ness are now in lowly circumstances. Rich- 
ard, the Lion-Hearted, is a little boot-black in 
New York city. The little fellow has had the 
hardest sort of a time, even to keep alive. 
The first time the author saw him, he stood on 
the curbing, watching a passing show. A 
great lady in silks and furs, attracted by his 
bright eyes and scanty clothing, stooped and 
put a dollar into his hand. He looked up 
quickly, and then with an oath threw the coin 
into the gutter. The great lady flushed and 
passed on, her mind full of indignation at the 
insolence and ingratitude of the poor ; while the 
boot-black, the show spoiled for him that day, 
took his quivering body down a side alley, his 
heart bursting with grief because he had no 
better opportunity than blacking boots to make 
use of the power and capacity he felt throbbing 
in his soul. In a former incarnation, that great 
lady would have been glad to have even washed 
the feet of that poor little boot-black. 



156 SOULS. 

The great and good are still on earth ; some 
of them adding to the pride and enjoyments 
of men, but more passing through those pro- 
cesses which make them great and good in 
the eyes of the flame. Men in their blindness, 
ignorance, and folly make these processes 
needlessly hard for them ; and it were well to 
remember that all souls have come up from 
lowly places, and that most souls go back to 
those places for the final baptism which washes 
away the last stain's. 

Does any soul wish to look at its own past ? 
Hardly may a soul withstand that sight : a 
single picture from one incarnation may give 
despair and a desire to flee forever from the 
eyes of men, but the soul may not flee ; the 
despair and the desire must both be given up, 
for they too are a part of the pride of the 
world. The wish to know its own past is 
gratified for any soul as soon as its develop- 
ment and purification have gone far enough to 
insure it against desire to take revenge on 
other souls who have harmed it, or to make ill 
use of any knowledge about other souls which 
necessarily comes in looking over its own 
past. In mercy to a man, the gods may keep 
from him his own soul's past, even while they 
show him the careers of other souls in order 



JUDGMENT. 157 

to teach him the meaning of life ; but the time 
comes when this may be done no longer. 
Before a soul can pass to life beyond our 
planet, it must unroll the long coil of its 
earthly incarnations and look itself in the face. 
This is the judgment day, the judge is the 
soul itself, and every witness speaks the truth. 
The soul, hitherto so eager to be done with 
earth, so ready to pass beyond, after that judg- 
ment day, usually desires return, and like the 
soul of William of Orange — see page 87 — 
voluntarily enters into the limitations of a poor 
environment with the hope of a little helping 
those who are not yet ready to come to judg- 
ment. 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER II. 

OTHER UNIVERSES BESIDES OUR OWN. 

Some time after the first visit to the central 
spheres, the author, desiring to see farther into 
the haze which had limited her vision, started 
for the outer zone of the great belt of worlds. 
A messenger came to her side and said, 
"That way lies death." She returned to 
earth ; but nearly a year later she said, " If to 
go is death, to death will I go," and went. 

She found the limits, as once she had found 
the limits of earth's atmosphere. As a soul 
may poise on the limits of earth's atmosphere, 
and look out into the great non-physical 
stream and see the worlds whirling in it, 
without dreaming of the possibility of leav- 
ing that safe shelter and trusting strength 
to cross to even the nearest world ; so the 
soul of the author poised on the border of this 
universe, and looked out into a greater be- 
yond. 

In that beyond, are spaces which are to this 

universe what the spaces in our great belt are 

to the suns in the belt ; and in those spaces 
. ♦ 158 



OTHER UNIVERSES. 159 

float universes, as clouds float in a clear sky. 
What filled those spaces was to all within 
this universe as hydrogen to air, and as sun- 
shine to twilight. 

As the soul of the author turned to come 
back, she found one of the great angels beside 
her. "Wilt go?" he asked. " Not now," was 
replied. "Hast thou been?" — "Yes" She 
looked on the angel, but spoke not. After a 
moment he said, " I have gone as far as I 
dared go ; and reached no end, no limit of a 
belt like ours, no greater center. Each universe 
which I passed has its nucleus, as ours has its 
center of nine spheres, enclosing the cube 
with its sphere and flame, the home and the 
source of our life." To look at the angel, to 
realize his might, to remember what it is to 
move beside such as he, — gave great signifi- 
cance to his words. What his strength and 
daring had not limited was present satisfac- 
tion to a child of earth. 

Remembering that, in our universe, threads 
from the center go to each soul, the author 
looked to see if our center has its ray who holds 
it to some greater, far-off center. The thread 
was there — a thread so delicate, so subtile, it 
was barely visible — the thread from which the 
flame, the source of our life, draws his being. 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III. 

SOULS OF ANIMALS AND OF SAVAGE MEN. 

Every animal soul is a lost human soul, or 
a part of such a soul. Souls in going down- 
ward disintegrate, and their separate functions 
incarnate as individuals ; and this process of 
disintegration continues — taking place more 
or less after each incarnation — until the life 
force is extinct. 

Soul in the animal world, from highest to 
lowest, is prostrate, and unable to sustain the 
upright form. Form is everywhere expressive 
of condition and quality. Types fixed into set 
forms in the physical world change slowly, and 
but slightly in one lifetime ; but soul is mobile 
and quickly responsive to thought and emotion. 
When a man begins to indulge cruel or shame- 
less thoughts and emotions his soul begins to 
change from the human type ; and long before 
the death of the physical body, the man's soul 
may have become a brute ; and when such a soul 
leaves its human body at death, it is usually 
obliged to incarnate in a baby of that species in 

the animal world, which it most resembles 
1 60 



ANIMALS. 161 

Among civilized men, this downward career 
usually begins in horses, dogs, and swine. A 
soul which descends into the brute world 
may return to the human, but never through 
any brute type ; the return musl be made 
through the normal upward career, the vege- 
table kingdom. 

One of the most painful sights on the earth 
is to see a man followed about by a dog which 
contains the soul of his own father ; a woman 
driving a horse whose soul is that of her mother; 
and children tormenting animal pets whose 
souls have been human relatives, perhaps elder 
brothers and sisters. 

All savage men are a result of the debase- 
ment of human souls ; and all savage and infe- 
rior races will pass away as soon as there are 
no wretched, weak, and vicious souls to keep up 
their existence, 

In the upward current are no prostrate forms. 
Soul, imbued with spirit or ray, has two 
forms, — a spherical and a human. In the 
mineral world, the spherical predominates ; but, 
in the physical forms produced, a tendency is 
shown to approach the plant type and to dif- 
ferentiate in function. In the plant world, 
separation of functions, and the formation and 
isolation, of organs go on until soul is capable 



1 62 SOULS. 

of producing the human mechanism, and of 
sustaining its functions ; and when that is 
reached, the vegetable soul may incarnate 
among men. Throughout the vegetable world, 
soul is upright and human in general outline ; 
but in the higher and more complex types 
only, is it capable of building the human body. 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER V. 

SEX ON THIS PLANET. 

When the creative function on the physical 
plane is respected, no more soulless babies will 
be born. Sex on this planet is a thing so 
monstrous that no words can convey its hide- 
ous proportions. All use of the sexual func- 
tion which is not with direct intent to pro- 
duce children is adultery and prostitution, 
whatever the legal relations between the 
parties may be ; and the ultimate end of all 
adulterers and harlots is utter extinction. 

A sexually pure person cannot feel sexual 
desire, any more than an eye can desire to see, 
or an ear to hear ; and all sexual demand is" 
lust and not love. A pure man and woman 
may desire parentage: that desire is of the soul ; 
and the body will respond to it, but with- 
out sensation, as the eye responds to the soul's 
command to see. 

On the planet Mercury, in our solar system, 
the reproductive act is a religious ceremony. 
The ceremony and its accompaniments are so 
pure, so delicate, so unlike anything on this 
planet, that the loveliest wedding on earth does 
not mate it in solemnity and beauty. 
163 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI. 

EARTH UNDER TRIAL. 

At present, the planet earth is under trial 
before the gods, as a man is tried in our human 
courts. If condemned, the soul of the earth 
will be required to leave its body ; this will 
destroy all physical life on the planet. If ac- 
quitted, the earth will be given another thous- 
and years of life in this body. 

If the earth be condemned, all souls of men 
on earth who are strong and nearly through 
earthly development will be taken to other 
planets in our solar system — principally to Jupi- 
ter — to complete their planet education. The 
conditions on other planets are, in some res- 
pects, so unlike conditions here that these souls, 
having begun on earth, will suffer harm by be- 
ing thus transferred ; and they would be ulti- 
mately stronger if allowed to go further on 
earth. If the earth be acquitted, in the remain- 
ing one thousand years, these strong souls will 
be able to complete their education to such a 
point that they can take hold of opportunities 
for development on other planets with more 
164 



EARTH UNDER TRIAL. 165 

ease, and more surety of using them wisely. 
This trial may continue until 1901: that is 
the farthest limit which will be allowed before 
judgment will be passed. The attorney who will 
try the case for the " State's " side — for the gov- 
ernment under which the gods live — is "The 
Terrible One"; and he will be assisted by two 
others like him. These three gods are the 
souls of three suns which are centers of sys- 
tems similar to our solar system, and revolve 
around the same great sun. The places which 
these systems occupy in the greater system may 
be compared to the places which in our solar 
system the planets Jupiter, Mars, and Venus 
occupy. 

The earth has known this trial was pending ; 
and has made desperate efforts to ward it off, 
and to get an indefinite extension of time. One 
of these efforts is the theosophical movement 
— a revival and spread of a body of influence, 
whose essential, spiritual essence has passed 
away. Theosophy is a dead issue, incapable of 
reviving, much less of regenerating, the con- 
science of earth's millions. Another effort is 
the Esoteric Union, recently founded in Lon- 
don, England. Mrs. Kingsford's soul is one 
whom the earth -god has favored through an 
hundred incarnations ; and in its latest incarna- 



1 66 SOULS. 

tion, as Mrs. Kingsford, the earth gave to this 
soul, through the noblest of his servants, all of 
religion he has — all about being, the meaning 
and object of existence, and the life beyond, 
which he remembered from the days of his own 
former experiences. From Mrs. Kingsford, he 
hid his weaknesses, save as she saw them in 
herself and in other men. Her works, "The 
Perfect Way ; or The Finding of Christ," and 
"Clothed with The Sun," are a record of 
these instructions ; and they do gather up 
and focus all the rays of religious intelligence 
which the earth -god has, or has himself 
spread among the peoples on his body. 

The earth -god has many names, but the 
one which he has made most efforts to impress 
upon men is Jehovah ; and he is the god of 
whom the souls of men on earth are a part, 
until they lift themselves in character above 
him. 

This is the day of the strong ; he who would 
help men to-day must show no weakness, and 
what he does must appeal to the strong to be 
of value. 

The weak have had their day. The doc- 
trine of vicarious atonement appeals to the 
weak. The cross of Jesus has been elevated 
to cast a shadow over the whole earth ; to en- 



EARTH UNDER TRIAL. 167 

courage the weak, erring, vicious man and 
woman to believe that in that shadow is 
release from the consequences of sin. That 
cross, with the meaning which is attached to it 
by most churches of Christendom, is the most 
gigantic error on earth. Those who lifted that 
cross at first had desire to help men ; but the 
outcome of that lifting shows that a departure 
from integrity never bears any but baleful 
fruits. The men, who were thus willing to 
depart from integrity in order to ensnare 
men to good in a mesh of lies, have them- 
selves reaped the effects of their motives in 
much suffering, shame, sin, and weakness ; for 
they, in subsequent incarnations, have been 
born under the shadow of the cross, and tasted 
to the full all the sinister effects of it. It has 
made brave men cowards, and pure men sen- 
sualists ; because it has allowed a man to think 
that he could sin to-day, repent to-morrow, 
and pass in at the beautiful gates unchal- 
lenged. 

Many a man on earth to-day feels in his 
secret soul the foolishness, senselessness, and 
dishonor of this monstrous lie ; and it is time 
that all such men spoke the truth, and acted 
out their impulses. 

Such as have too little moral energy to rouse 



1 68 SOULS. 

themselves, and fully and willingly pay 
their own soul's debts, and wash themselves 
free from foulness, will go on believing that 
they can get into heaven, with all their defile- 
ment and dishonor, by clinging to the skirts of 
some good soul or god. Does any good 
father or decent mother let a child come into 
the house after wallowing in the mire, without 
being washed ? If the child be grown and 
able to wash himself, will the father or mother 
do it for him, unless he be an idiot, in which 
case he would not be trusted in the street 
alone to get into mire ? When a soul has 
enough intelligence, energy, knowledge, and 
opportunity provided to enable it to purify 
itself and pay its debts — by atoning to every 
other soul for every wrong done — will any 
god care enough about that soul to do any- 
thing for it, so long as it refuses to try to do 
for itself ? 

The gods who watch men are weary of their 
weaknesses and moral debasement ; and weary 
of hearing prayers asking them, the gods, to 
do man's own dirty work for him. 

The gods have been divinely patient with 
men, waiting for them to rouse themselves, 
and dare to be strong. But for this patience, 
the earth would have been destroyed long ago ; 



EARTH UNDER TRIAL. 169 

for its wickedness is a stench in the nostrils of 
the beings who make up the nine central 
spheres, and a loathing to many a lesser god. 

The gods have now done with the weak. As 
a teacher, after being patient, and trying in 
every possible way to rouse, help, and carry 
along weak and idle pupils, near the close of 
the year drops them out of mind, and concen- 
trates attention on those who can pass the 
year's work : so, now, the gods will cease to try 
to help the weak ; and turn all of their influences 
to perfecting, so far as possible, such souls as 
are strong enough to wish to be helped in 
ways which are honorable to both gods and 
men. 

Let no soul imagine that brutality is strength, 
nor that to kill a man's body is the only form 
of murder. He who willingly, knowingly takes 
opportunity from another man is brutal ; and 
he who crushes the hope in another man's soul 
is a murderer. 

Let every man, first of all, return his ill- 
gotten gains, not by building hospitals, asy- 
lums, and schools ; but by returning those gains 
directly to those from whom they were taken, 
be it man or state. When a man has paid to the 
full all that he has stolen or taken by under- 
handed, unrighteous, cruel indifference to the 



170 SOULS, 

needs and prosperity of other men, cities, or 
states, then, and not till then, may he try to 
wash his own soul free from foulness, or utter 
any sort of prayer to the gods ; for the prayers 
of a man whose life is one long, brutal lie are, 
in the ears of the gods, the foulest blasphemy 
a soul can utter. 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII. 

FOODS. 

If man were pure, he could draw his suste- 
nance from the mineral world, as plants do ; 
and impure as he is, the only legitimate food 
there is for him, on this planet, is the fruits 
and seeds of plants. 

Of the grains, Indian corn is, for the aver- 
age man, the best on our planet. It will make 
the strongest body and the toughest brain and 
nerve possible to a child of earth. It has in 
it the strength, tenacity, and filtering power 
against foulness, which truth has against error. 
It is the only perfect grain this planet has 
produced. This grain is capable of being per- 
fected, — purified from its wild qualities, and 
transformed by cultivation into a food which, 
unground and uncooked, will be as palatable 
and as digestible as beech nuts. In its present, 
crude state, mush made of yellow corn meal 
and cooked about four hours in an open ket- 
tle, over a slow fire — stirring the grain into 
cold water and heating slowly to the simmer- 
ing point — is one of the best methods of pre- 
171 



172 SOULS. 

paring it. Another, is the common pop-corn. 
The most delicate varieties of pop-corn, well 
popped, thoroughly chewed, and taken with 
copious draughts of pure spring water, — are the 
most perfect food man can now get on this 
planet. 

Next to corn, barley is the best grain on our 
planet. Its original home is the star Aldeb- 
aran ; where it grows in such perfection that 
beside it, the best on our planet is a poor, 
coarse weed. It is capable of great improve- 
ment by proper cultivation. 

Wheat is not a native of this earth ; but was 
brought here from the planet Jupiter, where 
it is indigenous. On Jupiter, it is not used for 
food, but is the grass principally used for turf ; 
and that turf is so tough that roads pass over 
it without destroying it. 

A grain resembling rye is used for the same 
purpose on the planet Saturn. On neither 
of these planets are there any dusty roads or 
paved streets : but beautiful, green, close, clean 
turf over which everything passes ; and which, 
in the open country, extends often as far as 
the eye can see. 

Rice is a poor food for men, not because of its 
physical, but because of its moral effects ; for as 
all vegetables have souls, so do all foods produce 



FOODS. 173 

moral effects on those who partake of them. 
Oats are unfit for human food , and any peo- 
ple who continually uses them must inevitably 
dwindle away, unless their numbers are kept 
up by incarnations among them of souls 
whose bodies had not previously fed on that 
grain. 

The pulse family of vegetables — beans, 
peas, lentils, etc. — are the scavenger beetles, 
fleas, and carrion crows of the plant world. 
They all draw from the soil coarse, foul, 
parasitic qualities ; and are no fit food for 
clean men. 

Onions are the most wholesome of all veg- 
etables which grow in or on the soil. They 
give heat, energy, and moral fire, and cleanse 
the system. By proper cultivation, a variety 
might be produced which would be free from 
rankness, and so delicate as to be eaten raw 
with pleasure and without producing a vile 
breath. 

Cabbage is the best vegetable which grows 
above the ground ; but it needs purifying from 
its rank, crude qualities. It has excellent 
medicinal properties, and should always be 
eaten raw. 

Onions, cabbage, and watercress are the only 
so-called vegetables, which men now use in 



174 SOULS. 

civilized lands, which a man with the gift of 
non-physical sight would be willing to partake 
of as a food, or in any manner save as a neces- 
sary medicine. 

All fruits and nuts which grow on trees, and 
the better sorts of wild berries are good food. 

Meat foods of all sorts — the flesh of the 
bodies of lost human souls — are an abomina- 
tion to the gods, and to all purified men ; and 
the milk of pregnant cows, one with developed 
interior senses would rather starve than par- 
take of. 

A man or woman who desires to cleanse 
the body, and bring it into obedience in the 
shortest possible time, and with the least pain 
and friction to mind and soul, should try to 
live on pop-corn and spring water : and should 
partake of nothing else whatever ; until, day 
after day, week in and week out, he or she is 
contented with those, and feels no desire for 
other food or drink. When that time comes, 
and not sooner, can other foods — grains, fruits, 
nuts, vegetables — be tried with any surety 
that appetite will select what is good for the 
system, and properly regulate the quantity to 
be eaten. 

Let no man judge of the effects — physical, 
mental or moral — of the corn grain until it 



FOODS. 175 

has been properly purified by cultivation, and 
used by a superior race for a sufficient period 
of time to test its qualities, and their results 
upon the human system. 

In the process of bringing the body to obedi- 
ence, no perfection can be expected, so long 
as one remains among people who live the 
ordinary lives. The smaller entities pass from 
one body to another ; and especially are they 
attracted to a body whose tissues are clean. 
Each entity from an impure body is an ele- 
ment of discord in a pure body, until it, 
too, has been regenerated : this is one reason 
why common domestic and social life is so 
irritating and painful to clean men and women. 

The beginnings of regenerating the body 
are best made in solitude, unless one is so 
fortunate as to be associated with those who 
share the efforts. Even when the process is 
complete, some discord is sure to be experi- 
enced after each prolonged contact with those 
who live in the ordinary manner ; and to main- 
tain complete purity of body and mind while in 
daily contact with the common, human stream 
on this planet, is a labor which even the gods 
regard with compassion, and even they would 
reverence the soul who achieved it. It has 
never yet been achieved on this planet. 



^o</ ^° 



4rn — 
I- hi 

176 SOULS. 

Nevertheless, the strong will undertake this 
labor, and to every such an one, the gods 
send this message : " Love is the only force 
which can cleanse impurities and adjust dis- 
cords, without and within ; and in proportion 
to the power of a soul to love will be the 
rapidity and perfection with which it will 
achieve the great labor of regenerating its 
own material kingdom while performing the 
common duties of life among men." 



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